Abstract
The aims of this study were to describe and compare the meat quality characteristics of male and female kids from the "Serrana" and "Preta de Montesinho" breeds certified as "Cabrito Transmontano" and reinforce the performance of near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectra in predicting these quality characteristics and discriminating among breeds. Samples of Longissimus thoracis (n = 32; sixteen per breed; eight males and eight females) were used. Breed significantly affected meat quality characteristics, with only color and fatty acid (FA) (C12:0) being influenced by sex. The meat of the "Serrana" breed proved to be more tender than that of the "Preta de Montesinho". However, the meat from the "Preta de Montesinho" breed showed higher intramuscular fat content and was lighter than that from the "Serrana" breed, which favors its quality of color and juiciness. The use of NIR with the linear support vector machine regression (SVMR) classification model demonstrated its capability to quantify meat quality characteristics such as pH, CIELab color, protein, moisture, ash, fat, texture, water-holding capacity, and lipid profile. Discriminant analysis was performed by dividing the sample spectra into calibration sets (75 percent) and prediction sets (25 percent) and applying the Kennard-Stone algorithm to the spectra. This resulted in 100% correct classifications with the training data and 96.7% accuracy with the test data. The test data showed acceptable estimation models with R(2) > 0.99.