Sensory characteristics of tenderness, juiciness and flavour of beef are important criteria that affect consumer’s evaluation of beef quality. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIR) may be an effective tool to predict sensory characteristics of beef meat. This method is non-destructive, fast and potentially suitable for on-line measurements. The association between NIR measurements and sensory characteristics is expected to be based on chemical (e.g. water, lipid and protein content) and physical or structural (e.g. muscle fibre characteristics) properties of the meat. Objective measurements of physical or structural characteristics can be obtained using Volodkevitch shear force or slice shear force techniques (Shackelford et al., 1999). The objective of this study was to investigate the associations between eating quality traits of beef and NIR measurements.