► NIR spectroscopy technique was attempted to rapidly determine the pork quality. ► Improving the model performance by optimising spectra preprocessing and PLS factors. ► Spectra region selection by SI-PLS will improve the model quality. Total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N) content is one of important index of pork’s freshness, and Warner–Bratzler shear force (WBSF) is seen as the important index of pork’s tenderness. This paper attempted the feasibility to determine TVB-N content and WBSF in pork by Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy. Synergy interval partial least square (SI-PLS) algorithm was performed to calibrate regression model. The number of PLS factors and the number of intervals were optimised simultaneously by cross-validation. The performance of the model was evaluated according to two correlation coefficients (R) in calibration and prediction sets. Experimental results showed that the correlations coefficients in the calibration set (Rc) and prediction set (Rp) were achieved as follows: Rc=0.8398 and Rp=0.8084 for TVB-N content model; Rc=0.7533 and Rp=0.7041 for WBSF model. The overall results demonstrated that NIR spectroscopy combined with SI-PLS could be utilised to determinate TVB-N content and WBSF in pork.