05/16/1996

Lonergan Looking for Ways to Produce High Quality Meat

AUBURN, Ala.- You can have it fast, or you can have it good...

Most of us expect a trade-off between efficiency and quality, but one Auburn University meat scientist believes pork and beef producers shouldn't have to accept that compromise. His research program is exploring ways to quickly and efficiently produce high quality meat products.

Steven Lonergan, assistant professor of animal and dairy sciences at Auburn University, joined the Auburn staff last September. Since his arrival he has initiated research programs examining both beef and pork quality issues and, in particular, how genetics play a role in production of high quality meat products.

A native of Iowa, Lonergan came to Auburn from the University of Nebraska where he earned the Ph.D. in animal science with a minor in biochemistry. Prior to his Ph.D. work, Lonergan received his bachelor's and master's degrees in animal science from Iowa State University. His interest in animal science began at an early age, "I grew up on a small rural acreage in West Liberty, Iowa," he explained. "Though farming was not my family's business, we had a lot of livestock and I showed Suffolk sheep, market hogs, Yorkshire pigs and had a beef project through F.F.A. and 4-H. We also had rabbits and chickens, so I was exposed to livestock all my life."

Those childhood experiences led Lonergan to major in animal science. His interest in meat science and muscle biology was piqued through meat science classes and through his involvement with the meat judging team at Iowa State.

When he finished his bachelor's degree, Lonergan worked for almost a year as a quality control technician in a dry sausage processing plant before returning to Iowa State for his master's degree. Until that time he had been more interested in processing quality issues, but the research he was conducting on the effects of porcine somatotropin hormones on the quality of pork sparked his interest in live-animal muscle physiology.

Lonergan carried that focus into his Ph.D. work at Nebraska, where he worked on various meat quality issues affecting the tenderness of meat.

Tenderness, said Lonergan, is a vital part of meat quality. "If a piece of steak is hard to chew, it's difficult to tell if the flavor is any good," he noted. The tenderness of meat, Lonergan explained, is related to the structural proteins of the muscle.

While at Nebraska, he specifically examined the role of calpains and calpastatin on meat tenderness. "Calpains are endogenous enzymes found in the muscle that are thought to play a role in muscle growth and the tenderness of meat," said Lonergan. His research at Nebraska, which was conducted in part through the U.S.D.A. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., focused on calpastatin, a calpain inhibitor.

"In a number of studies, calpastatin has been shown to be responsible for about 30 percent of the variation in meat tenderness," explained Lonergan. "High calpastatin activity inhibits the calpains so there is very little degradation of the muscle structural proteins, postmortem."

Now that he's at Auburn, Lonergan will continue his work with calpastatins in conjunction with his wife, Elisabeth, who also is an assistant professor of animal and dairy sciences at Auburn and who is heading a calpain study. Their research is supported in part by the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES).

"We are searching for a calpain- or calpastatin-related marker that we could use to predict tenderness or identify a particular genotype that might have high calpastatin activity. If we can find such a marker, we may be able to classify a genotype that could help identify beef sires that have a tendency to produce progeny that yield tougher meat. If cattle producers can know which bloodlines might produce tough meat, they can select bulls to avoid that problem."

Lonergan noted that this research may require years to complete, but the research results could be very valuable to producers. "That should truly be our goal as animal scientists -- not just efficient production of meat, but efficient production of high quality meat," he added.

Another issue Lonergan is addressing in his research program is the relationship between fast muscle growth and muscle tenderness. He explained that the fast growth tends to result in tougher meat. He is looking for ways to help producers grow animals quickly and efficiently and still produce tender beef. "If we could find and identify some of the molecular mechanisms that cause protein degradation in living muscle and in harvested meat, we might be able to manipulate these to maximize efficient growth and tenderness," he explained.

Pork also is a focus of Lonergan's research. One of the first projects he has undertaken at AU is related to an AAES swine breeding study conducted by AU swine geneticist Daryl Kuhlers. Kuhlers' study looked at increasing loin eye area of hogs through genetic selection. When the study was completed, the scientists found that the quality of meat harvested from animals in the study varied greatly among the different breeding lines, which suggested that genetics were playing a role in meat quality. "I am interested in finding out what the consequences are of the selection criteria that they used to breed the pigs and how does that selection criteria affect muscle metabolism," Lonergan said.

In addition to his research program, Lonergan also is teaching meat science and muscle biology courses at Auburn, a fact that he finds very fulfilling. "The reason I started to go to graduate school is because I wanted to teach, then I got interested in research as well," he said. "I am excited about being able to do both here at Auburn."

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Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
Contact Katie Jackson, 334-844-5886 or smithcl@auburn.edu

May 16, 1996