P.PSH.1201 - NUCTECH DEXA carcase analysis for lean meat yield measurement

Summary

NUCTECH have designed, manufactured and installed a commercial small footprint DEXA system in an Australian abattoir. This project assessed the precision and accuracy with which the NUCTECH DEXA can predict CT fat, lean and bone% in lamb carcases. The NUCTECH DEXA system predicted lamb carcase CT fat, lean and bone% with high precision, and this high precision was maintained when prediction equations were trained and validated in subsets of the data.

The validation process also demonstrated that NUCTECH DEXA predictions are highly accurate. Noting this project as terminated due to difficulties with the original contractor who were representing Nuctech. Following this, the project was continued with Nuctech contracted directly under project code P.PSH.1344 and successfully completed.

Objectives

This project evaluated the precision and accuracy with which the small-footprint NUCTECH DEXA system can predict the CT fat, lean and bone % of lamb carcases DEXA scanned at abattoir line speed.

Key findings

This project demonstrated that the NUCTECH DEXA system can predict lamb carcase CT fat%, lean% and bone% with high precision, and that this high precision was maintained when the prediction equations were trained and validated in subsets of the data. The validation process also demonstrated that NUCTECH DEXA predictions of CT composition are highly accurate.

Benefits to industry

The NUCTECH DEXA system delivers benefit to the Australian lamb industry by providing a highly precise, accurate and objective measure of lamb lean meat yield at abattoir chain speed whilst having a smaller footprint compared to alternate DEXA systems, which creates opportunities for abattoirs with limited space.

MLA action

MLA continues to support NUCTECH to further develop DEXA, and other x-ray technologies for red meat industry applications.

Future research

It is recommended that future research focus on further validation of the prediction algorithms in a larger set of lambs representing the full variation in weight and fatness typically encountered in the Australian lamb supply chain. This will provide industry further confidence in the ability of this system to output precise and accurate measurements of CT LMY% in a commercial processing environment.