The influence of genetic type, lean meat percentage and sex on fatty acids (FA) composition of back fat of heavy pigs, reared for the production of San Daniele dry cured ham, was studied. One-hundred pigs of four genetic types - Large White or Duroc x (Landrace x Large White), GOLAND and DANBRED - were considered. They were randomly chosen during the slaughtering of 21 lots of heavy animals, in groups of four to eight subjects, balanced by sex, female and castrated males, and carcass leanness, U and R classes following the European grading system. Principal components (PCs) analysis showed that 94.3% of lot-diets’ FA variability was accounted for a five PCs model. The diet effect on the lard composition was weighted using the PCs scores as covariates in a tri-factorial (genotype, carcass leanness, sex) covariance design. Diet had a great effect on lard composition, indeed every examined back fat FA co-varied with the extracted PCs. On the other hand, sex effect never reached a significance threshold, as well as the interactions between factors. Genetic type influenced stearic acid and MUFA content and n6-PUFA to n3-PUFA ratio of back fat while leanness mainly influenced PUFA, the fatter class showing a significantly lower content of linoleic acid (13.2 vs. 11.9% total lipids in U vs. R class respectively).
