The objective of this study was to determine the relative contributions of Piedmontese inheritance (0, 25, 50, or 75%) and myostatin genotype (+/+, mh/+, and mh/mh) to tenderness of four major muscles. Matings were made to produce animals with 0 (+/+), 1 (mh/+), or 2 (mh/mh) inactive myostatin alleles that were known to result in normal muscling, heavy muscling, and extremely heavy muscling, respectively. Over a 4-yr period, 395 steers and heifers (14 to 17 mo of age) were humanely slaughtered and the carcasses were chilled 48 h at 0 degrees C. An eight-member trained descriptive attribute panel evaluated tenderness, ease of fragmentation, connective tissue amount, juiciness, and beef flavor intensity of longissimus thoracis (LD), gluteus medius (GM), semimembranosus (SM), and biceps femoris (BF) steaks at 14 d postmortem. Data were analyzed for the main effects of group (eight combinations of myostatin genotype and percentage Piedmontese; [+/+]/0%, [+/+]/25%, [+/+]/50%, [mh/+]/25%, [mh/+]/50%, [mh/+]/75%, [mh/mh]/50%, [mh/mh]/75%) and muscle. Muscle x group interactions were not significant (P > 0.05). Within myostatin genotypes, contrasts to test the effect of percentage Piedmontese were not significant (P > 0.05). Data were reanalyzed for the main effects of myostatin genotype and muscle. Tenderness, ease of fragmentation, and amount of connective tissue ratings were higher (P < 0.05) for the mh/+ and mh/mh genotypes relative to +/+ in all muscles. In biceps femoris, mh/mh had higher (P < 0.05) tenderness, ease of fragmentation, and amount of connective tissue ratings than the mh/+ genotype. Juiciness ratings were lower (P < 0.05) for mh/mh than for mh/+ in all muscles and were lower for mh/mh than for +/+ in all muscles except gluteus medius. Beef flavor intensity ratings were lower (P < 0.05) for mh/mh than for +/+ in all muscles. Muscle ranks for tenderness within myostatin genotype were LD > GM > SM > BF, LD > GM > SM > BF, LD > GM > BF > SM, for +/+, mh/+, and mh/mh genotypes, respectively. The effects of Piedmontese inheritance on meat tenderness were all due to myostatin genotype. Piedmontese mh/mh bulls could be used as terminal sires to produce mh/+ progeny with improved carcass value due to improved tenderness in the four muscles studied.