Abstract: Beef quality,as a key determinant of consumer decision-making and industrial economic efficiency,directly affects the market competitiveness of meat products and the economic returns of livestock production.Its phenotypic traits include both sensory and physicochemical attributes,such as marbling,tenderness,juiciness,flavor,and color,and are jointly regulated by genetic background,nutritional metabolism,feeding practices,and environmental factors.Conventional evaluation methods,which mainly depend on sensory scoring and physicochemical measurements,can capture certain differences in meat quality but fall short in revealing the underlying molecular mechanisms,thus hindering genetic improvement and precise quality control.In recent years,the rapid advancement of omics technologies—including genomics,transcriptomics,proteomics,and metabolomics—have provided powerful tools to comprehensively identify regulatory genes,pathways,and biomarkers associated with key beef quality traits,thereby enhancing our understanding of the molecular basis of meat quality formation.This review systematically examines the factors affecting beef quality,with a particular focus on core traits such as intramuscular fat deposition,tenderness,and flavor,and further analyzes their major regulatory pathways and potential molecular biomarkers.It further summarizes the methodologies and major findings of current multi-omics integration studies,while critically addressing the limitations related to sample heterogeneity,insufficient omics interpretability,and a lack of functional validation.The goal is to provide a theoretical framework and practical reference for accurate beef quality assessment,molecular breeding strategy development,and optimization of post-harvest processing.

Key words: beef quality; molecular regulatory mechanisms; multi-omics integration; intramuscular fat deposition; meat tenderness; flavor compounds