The metabolites showing significant changes or differences during postmortem aging between meat storage conditions or between muscles with different backgrounds of animal production were screened by multivariate analyses, including PCA and PLS-DA. With the confirmed association of a candidate metabolite with a specific trait or phenotype, biomarker candidates for meat quality traits can be identified from biologically meaningful metabolites compared with target traits, such as the rate and extent of oxidation or aging . Although the candidate needs to be validated for practical use, the candidate biomarker metabolite could potentially be useful for monitoring and controlling the quality of meat production processes.