Effectiveness of Calpastatin and Calpain Genes on Meat Quality and Tenderness in Iranian Livestock Breeds

Today, meat tenderness is one of the issues challenging international commercial companies to find a proper solution to enhance its quality. The factors affecting meat quality and tenderness before slaughter include nutrition, stress, genetics, gender, management, and post slaughter factors include aging time after rigor mortis, electrical excitability of muscle, pH, muscle tremors during slaughter, the nervation, frequent freezing and thawing of meat and finally cooking method. Small genes with great effects on genetic changes are called major genes, that are able to be transferred together to form a unit. Calpastatin and calpain genes influence growth and quality of carcass. Most of the researches have represented the relation between polymorphism of calpastatin and calpain genes and quality of carcass. Components of calpastatin and calpain system determine the speed of mead tenderness after slaughter, and acts as private and internal preventive. Hence, one of the methods to evaluate tenderness of the meat is determining level of calpastatin and calpain activity.