CARACTERÍSTICAS DE CARCAÇA E QUALIDADE DE CARNE DE SUÍNOS ALIMENTADOS COM NÍVEIS CRESCENTES DE LISINA, COM E SEM RACTOPAMINA

Abstract

The objective was to evaluate carcass characteristics and meat quality of castrated male and female finishing pigs fed with diet containing increasing levels of lysine, with or without 10 ppm of ractopamine. 180 pigs with high genetic potential for meat deposition were used for 21 days, with initial weight of 92.0 kg ± 1.2 kg, and approximately 130 days old, distributed in a completely randomized design, in a factorial arrangement 5x2x2: five digestible lysine levels (0.7; 0.8; 0.9; 1.0; 1.1%), two ractopamine levels (0 and 10 ppm) and two sexes (castrated males and females), with nine replications and one animal per experimental unit. For statistical analysis, a multivariate analysis procedure was adopted in 3 stages: a) means estimation of the characteristics for each treatment (in factorial analysis, each treatment results from the combination of sex-ractopamine-lysine factors); b) data dimensionality reduction, using principal component analysis and; c) using principal components, cluster analysis was performed. Lysine levels did not influence the groups formation, with the lowest percentage of lysine being sufficient. There was interaction between the sexes when ractopamine was included, in addition to ractopamine influencing meat quality characteristics.