Abstract: Protein oxidation would severely affect the quality of meat products via influencing their processing characteristics, nutritional values and flavors. In this study, the outer ridge of cattle was used as the research object and the low field NMR technology was employed to study the correlation of water transfer rule and protein oxidation during cold storage at 4 ℃ and ice-temperature storage at-2 ℃. Results showed that the pH and storage loss rate of beef were increased with the extension of storage time, while the sulfhydryl content was decreased with the increases of protein oxidation level and carbonyl content. The content of bound water(T₂₁) and hard-flowing water(T₂₂) were decreased in the two groups, while the content of free water(T₂₃) was increased, and the water retention was decreased. The correlation analysis showed that at 4 ℃, T2 bwas significantly positive-correlated with the content of sulfhydryl group（P ＜0.05）, T₂₁ was remarkably negative-correlated with the content of carbonyl group（P＜0.05）, T₂₂ was extremely significantly negative-correlated with the content of carbonyl group（P＜0.01）,T₂₂ was notably positive-correlated with the content of sulfhydryl group（P＜0.05）, T₂₃ was highly significantly positive-correlated with the content of carbonyl group（P＜0.01）. At-2 ℃, T₂₂ showed a significantly negative correlation with carbonyl content（P＜0.01）, a remarkably positive correlation with sulfhydryl content（P＜0.05）, T₂₃ showed a signifi cantly positive correlation with carbonyl content（P＜0.05）, and a notably negative correlation with sulfhydryl content（P＜0.05）, which suggested that there was a good correlation between water migration and protein oxidation, and the protein oxidation could be reflected by relaxation time T2 in low field NMR, and T₂₂ is the best indicator.