Abstract: With meat samples of longissimus dorsi and psoas major from 10 cross-bred pigs (Wanbai Ⅲ) as study objects, the correlation of meat color stability with metmyoglobin content and metmyoglobin reductase activity was studied during cold storage of 9 days. The results showed that L* value of psoas major is very significantly lower than that of longissimus dorsi (p <0.01), while redness (a* value) of longissimus dorsi is significantly higher than that of psoas major (p<0.05). As storage prolonging, a* value is tending to decrease with L* and b* value increasing, that is to say that meat color is becoming dark. a* value is weakly negatively correlated with metmyoglobin content, but middlely positively correlated with reductase activity. On the 3rd, 5th and 7th day, the correlation of a* value with metmyoglobin content and metmyoglobin reductase activity is up to significant level (p<0.05). It is suggested that pork should be coldly stored for less than 5 days.

Key words: metmyoglobin, metmyoglobin reductase, color stability, pork