“Fifty Years of Pig Breeding in France: Outcomes and Perspectives”, 2018-02-01 (; similar):
This synthesis reviews the main changes that have occurred in the pig breeding sector in France since the 1966 Breeding Act.
It briefly discusses the first 20 years, which were the subject of a review in 1986. It describes subsequent changes in more detail, in particular the March 1994 decree on pig selection and its organizational consequences.
Breeding goals, initially limited to production traits, have then integrated meat quality traits, sow prolificness and maternal abilities. Regarding tools, implementation of genetic evaluation based on the BLUP animal model in the mid-1990s and development of artificial insemination profoundly changed breeders’ work. A new major change, genomic selection, is currently being implemented. Large genetic gains have been obtained since 1970 for the main components of the breeding goal: they have exceeded 200 g/d for on-test average daily gain, −0.5 points for feed conversion ratio and 12 percentage points for carcass lean content, and approached 6 additional piglets born alive per litter.
These gains have reduced environmental impacts of pig production but also had some detrimental effects: an increase in piglet pre-weaning mortality and greater heterogeneity of performances.
Issues for future breeding goals (eg. inclusion of traits related to welfare, robustness and adaptation), methods and tools (eg. genomic selection, fine phenotyping, genome editing) are then discussed.
[Keywords: animal welfare, artificial insemination, Best Linear Unbiased Prediction, breeding aims, breeding programmes, breeding value, carcasses, environmental impact, feed conversion efficiency, genetic gain, genome analysis, lean, meat quality, performance traits, piglet production, piglets, prolificness, reproductive traits, sows, traits]