The Marbl IMF assessment technology in use on cattle at the Tullimba research feedlot

IT has long been a dream for the red meat industry to be able to predict eating quality in live animals rather than at the carcase stage in a chiller, and that dream is closer to becoming a reality.

An industry-led project initiated five years ago with New Zealand-based technology company inMR Measure to develop an intra-muscular fat measurement system for lamb carcases has been successful, with the first commercial installation expected in early 2025.

The technology uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the same tech that is used in MRI systems in human health.

Now the technology is being examined for use in beef cattle applications.

When MLA released an open call in 2022 looking for innovators to develop live animal objective measurement solutions, the inMR company believed its non-invasive technology could be adapted for this use and submitted proposals to develop systems to measure IMF in both sheep and cattle.

IMF and marbling scores are key value drivers in the beef industry and are beginning to become more sought-after in lamb. IMF has been proven to be a key indicator of eating quality in both species, and the ability to measure this in a live animal in a commercial setting creates an opportunity for producers to predict eating quality performance of live animals before slaughter.

The cattle system, known as Marbl, was evaluated at the University of New England’s Tullimba feedlot utilising cattle from the Southern Multi Breed project in partnership with NSW Department of Primary Industries.

The project explored whether NMR technology and an animal handling unit can be developed for measuring IMF of live cattle. A prototype NMR system was designed, built, and installed at Tullimba, scanning hundreds of cattle. Comparative samples were then collected post-slaughter.

Data from this project has shown the system has excellent potential to measure IMF in live cattle.

A similar project to assess the potential of the technology to measure IMF in live sheep was also conducted and achieved great results. This is significant, as there is currently no other commercial technology to measure IMF in live sheep, making this a significant step forward for industry.

Significant benefits for the industry

These two developments have the potential to create significant benefits for the industry, including:

• understanding production over time
• optimising production operations and consignments based on IMF data
• performance prediction of eating quality early in the production cycle
• improved input data into genetic evaluation models.

Both the cattle and sheep systems are still prototypes and require further development to achieve a commercial product. MLA plans to continue partnering with inMR Measure to bring these products to the market to benefit Australian producers.

Future research may look at:

• Establishing methods for collecting consistent high-quality data
• Gathering more NMR measurements on a range of cattle to validate a robust IMF% prediction model
• Develop faster and more flexible applications for different environments.

Click here to view the full report for Application of Marbl to Live Cattle IMF Measurement.

Source: MLA