Table 7. Effect of fattening period on physicochemical characteristics of longissimus dorsi muscle in Holstein steers

Item	20 mon	21 mon	22 mon	23 mon	24 mon	SEM	p-value¹⁾
Moisture (%)	66.74	66.51	66.64	66.92	67.59	0.86	0.4482
Crude fat (%)	11.34	11.76	10.86	11.53	10.78	0.94	0.1865
Crude protein (%)	20.06	20.01	20.80	20.24	20.91	0.36	0.2159
CIE value
L*	38.02^ab	41.33^a	38.66^ab	40.27^ab	36.74^b	1.10	0.0890
a*	19.86	21.01	20.42	21.03	21.88	0.78	0.4947
b*	8.19^b	9.82^a	8.96^ab	9.78^a	9.18^ab	0.47	0.1431
Chroma	21.49	23.20	22.31	23.21	23.73	0.89	0.4674
Hue	22.21^b	25.03^a	23.63^ab	24.79^a	22.58^b	0.50	0.0013
Cooking loss	30.81	31.11	31.59	30.39	31.85	0.21	0.2316

Probability of the F-test.
Means in the same row with different superscripts are significantly different (p < 0.05).