Abstract: 20 American strain Rex rabbits were slaughtered to study the characteristics and correlations of carcass and meat quality. The results showed: the average weight, commercial skin weight, dressing percentage, right hind leg weight, length and circumference length were 2.533 kg, 0.410 kg, 60.70%, 0.182 kg, 30.69 cm and 18.04 cm respectively about 150 days. The Rex rabbit longissimus lumborum and biceps femoris muscles pH of 1 h postmortem (pH1) were 6.42 and 6.43 separately, and pH of 24 h postmortem (pH24) were 6.22 and 6.35 separately. The L*values, a*values and b*values of longissimus lumborum muscle were 54.66, 12.37 and 9.06 respectively, and those of biceps femoris were 52.67, 9.89 and 4.08 respectively. The drip loss, ripe meat ration, cooking loss, Warner-Bratzler Shearing value, water content and intramuscular fat were 2.06%，62.12%，30.44%，2.453 kg.f，73.60% and 1.67% respectively. The positive correlations of commercial skin weight to hot carcass weight, length were high significant (P<0.01), and the positive correlation of commercial skin weight to commercial carcass weight was significant (P<0.05). Weight（hot carcass weight, commercial carcass weight and right hind leg weight）, body figure (length and circumference) to drip loss, cooking loss were negative correlations, and to ripe meat ration, WarnerBratzler Shearing value were positive correlations, but there were not significant (P>0.05).

Key words: rex rabbit of American strain; carcass characteristic; physicochemical property; meat quality