PSE (Warner et al. 1997; Joo et al. 1999). However, in
the present study, all groups presented a lower drip
loss than 6.0%.
The effects of weaning age and weight and their
interaction were not found in any TPA traits
(P < 0.05), as shown in Table 5. Texture of meat, especially
tenderness, is significantly related to intramuscular
fat (IMF) content (Blanchard et al. 1999) and the
meat from heavy pigs have high content of IMF and
low shear force, in accordance with Kim et al. (2013)
and Galián et al. (2009). However, tenderness did not
significantly differ among the groups (P > 0.05). We
expected that there were effects of weaning age and
weight on hardness, because higher carcass weights
were found in the L groups and D28 group than found
in the M and H groups and D21 group, respectively, as