Abstract: 【Objective】This paper is to discuss the relevance between the change of muscle glycogen and meat quality of IRA rabbit within 36 h slaughter. 【Method】After slaughter, the intramuscular glycogen of IRA rabbit occurs glycolysis reaction into lactic acid in a certain period of time, thus changing the pH value of the carcass, and further affecting meat quality indicators, such as water holding capacity, shear force, color and so on. The longissimus dorsi (LD) muscle and the left leg (LL) muscle were used as raw materials and the variation in content of muscle glycogen of IRA rabbit at 45 min, 4 h, 8 h, 12 h, 24 h and 36 h slaughter period was measured, respectively, by kit method, and the related meat quality indexes during corresponding post-mortem, such as pH, cooking loss, drip loss, shear force and color changes were all determined. In addition, the correlation between meat quality and muscle glycogen variation of IRA rabbit from LD and LL during the 36 h post-mortem were discussed, by the way of partial least squares regression analysis (PLS2), making the main design factors (pH, cooking loss, drip loss, total loss, shear force, L*, a*, b*, C*) as X variables, and muscle glycogen content as Y variables. 【Result】The muscle glycogen content of LD and LL of IRA rabbit decreased significantly (P＜0.05) within 36 h slaughter, reduced from the initial (2.61±0.50) mg•g-1 and (2.77±0.55) mg•g-1 to (0.94±0.05) mg•g-1 and (0.99 ± 0.07) mg•g-1 after 36 h slaughter, respectively. At the same time, the pH value of LD and LL of Iraq rabbit meat decreased from (6.91 ± 0.02) and (6.85 ± 0.04) in the initial post-mortem to (5.62 ± 0.09) and (5.61 ± 0.09) after 36 h slaughter, respectively. In the meantime, the meat quality index of Ira rabbit occurred corresponding changes as the pH value decreased, such as shear strength, lightness value L*, redness value a* decreased; cooking loss, drip loss, total losses, the value of b* and the value of C* increased. PLS2 analysis shows that the correlations between the above meat quality indicators and muscle glycogen content of IRA rabbit during 36 h post-mortem were significant, and the R regression value of location LD and LL reached up to 0.796-0.972 and 0.890-0.996, respectively. Among them, the total loss indicators (sum of cooking loss and drip loss) of the two parts (LD and LL) were provided with more significant sources of variation, compared to other meat quality indexes. What’s more, these meat quality indicators after slaughter can be used as independent variables to predict the score of muscle glycogen changes of IRA rabbit successfully by using Unscrambler regression equation. 【Conclusion】The decrease of muscle glycogen of IRA rabbit within 36 h slaughter period was significant, and the variation was closely related to the corresponding meat quality. Therefore, the correlation between glycolysis law and meat quality indicator can be used to set regression equation for the better prediction of muscle glycogen content changes.

Key words: IRA rabbit , muscle glycogen , rabbit meat quality , correlation