Zhao et al. Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology (2023) 14:2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40104-022-00805-0 REVIEW © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Open Access Stage-specifc nutritional management and developmental programming to optimize meat production Liang Zhao 1,2 , Xiangdong Liu 2 , Noe A Gomez 2 , Yao Gao 2 , Jun Seok Son 2,3 , Song Ah Chae 2 , Mei-Jun Zhu 4 and Min Du 2* Abstract Over the past few decades, genetic selection and refined nutritional management have extensively been used to increase the growth rate and lean meat production of livestock. However, the rapid growth rates of modern breeds are often accompanied by a reduction in intramuscular fat deposition and increased occurrences of muscle abnor- malities, impairing meat quality and processing functionality. Early stages of animal development set the long-term growth trajectory of offspring. However, due to the seasonal reproductive cycles of ruminant livestock, gestational nutrient deficiencies caused by seasonal variations, frequent droughts, and unfavorable geological locations nega- tively affect fetal development and their subsequent production efficiency and meat quality. Therefore, enrolling live- stock in nutritional intervention strategies during gestation is effective for improving the body composition and meat quality of the offspring at harvest. These crucial early developmental stages include embryonic, fetal, and postnatal stages, which have stage-specific effects on subsequent offspring development, body composition, and meat quality. This review summarizes contemporary research in the embryonic, fetal, and neonatal development, and the impacts of maternal nutrition on the early development and programming effects on the long-term growth performance of livestock. Understanding the developmental and metabolic characteristics of skeletal muscle, adipose, and fibrotic tissues will facilitate the development of stage-specific nutritional management strategies to optimize production efficiency and meat quality. Keywords: Adipose tissue, Embryonic development, Fetal programming, Fibro/adipogenic progenitors, Marbling, Nutritional regulations, Skeletal muscle Introduction Over time, contemporary livestock breeds have been extensively selected for rapid lean growth and feed ef- ciency, which resulted in substantial increases in meat production efciency during the past few decades [1, 2]. Because adipose metabolism is energetically costive, optimizing growth efciency coincides with reduction in fat deposition [3]. However, meat quality of fast-growing livestock is often compromised, including the reduc- tion in intramuscular fat (“marbling” in beef cattle) and the enlargement of muscle fbers, which collectively decreased tenderness, juiciness, and favor [4, 5]. Simi- larly, excessive hypertrophy of muscle fbers disrupts metabolic phenotypes of muscle fbers, including an increase in glycolytic white muscle fbers which infuence the processing functionality of meat [6]. Ruminant animals, including sheep and cattle, fre- quently experience nutrient shortages during their preg- nancy caused by seasonal variations, frequent droughts, *Correspondence: min.du@wsu.edu 2 Nutrigenomics and Growth Biology Laboratory, Department of Animal Sciences, Washington State University, WA 99164 Pullman, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article