SUMMARY

Boning room dissection data from 3,084 carcasses were examined to determine which commercial primal cuts would provide a reduced set of cuts to best measure retail beef yield percent (RBY %). Animals were part of the Beef CRC straightbred program and consisted of 2,251 steers and 833 heifers from temperate and tropically adapted breeds. Potential predictors were 10 retail cuts, carcass weight and subcutaneous fat depth at the rib and rump sites. Only 6 primal cuts and the carcass weight appeared in the final equation (R2 = 89.2 %) which also included the fixed effect of contemporary group defined as herd of origin, sex, and kill. Although the investigation of residuals did not reveal any anomalies, the final prediction equation tended (P < 0.05) to overestimate values at the lower end of the scale, and vice versa. The estimate of genetic correlation between predicted and actual RBY % was 0.92