Identification of muscle flavor differences and the key regulatory genes in five different parts of Hu Sheep

Flavor is an important meat quality index, which directly determines consumer preference. In recent years, consumers have shown a clear preference for meat products from different parts of the carcass. While, the systematic comparison of flavor between common edible parts of lambs is limited, which will be a limitation for meat processing and quality improvement. Thus, the present study has firstly characterized and compared the lipidomic and volatilomic profiles of triceps brachii (TB), biceps femoris (BF), longissimus thoracis (LT), neck muscle (NM), and flank muscle (FM) of Hu lambs using the widely-targeted lipidomic and volatilomic analyses, and explored the formation mechanism of the variation by integrating the transcriptome data.