Phenotyping of Animals and Their Meat: Applications of Low-Power Ultrasounds, Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, and Hyperspectral Imaging

High-throughput phenotyping of farm animals is essential to meet the new challenges facing the animal husbandry sector (e.g., improve robustness and health; predict eating quality of animal products). Therefore, rapid, repeatable, standardized, and automated measurements that generate significant volumes of data comparable across countries or laboratories are required. Several technologies are actually available for this aim in the field of meat quality. This paper overviews the application of some promising technologies, which are in a transition period between research and practical utilization for performing high-throughput phenotyping of different meat quality traits. The technologies described in this review are low-power ultrasounds, near-infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and hyperspectral imaging. Such techniques have shown potential for making rapid and real-time measurements. They allow the nondestructive accumulation of information on the chemical and physical properties of meat samples.