The use of barley as single ingredient in the diet provided during the finishing period may improve the meat quality of heavy pigs from PO Teruel ham (Spain)

Thirty-two Duroc x (Large White x Landrace) barrows of 86.6 kg of body weight (BW) were used to investigate the effect of diet (control or granulated barley) provided during the finishing period on growth performance, meat quality and costs of production. The control diet consisted in a commercial feedstuff and the granulated barley diet consisted in the use of this cereal as only ingredient. The pigs were assigned to pens in groups of two (eight replicates per treatment) and were slaughtered at 130 kg BW. All the animals received the same feeding and management before the trial. No differences were observed for the growth performance and carcass traits between treatments. Pigs fed granulated barley had higher (P <0.01) feed conversion ratio but lower production costs per kg of live (P <0.001) and carcass (P <0.01) weight than those on the control diet. The intramuscular fat (IMF) percentage in Longissimus dorsi muscle tended to be higher (P = 0.07) and had higher (P <0.01) C18:1n-9 and total monounsaturated fatty acid (FA) percentages and lower (P<0.05) C17:0, C17:1, C18:2n-6, C18:3n-3, C20:3n-9, Zn-6, 2n-3 and total polyunsaturated FA proportions in pigs fed granulated barley than in the control pigs. It is concluded that the use of barley as single ingredient in the diet provided during the finishing period of pigs may increase the IMF percentage, the C18:1n-9 proportion in IMF and some colour parameters of meat.