social interaction in pigs and its genetic associations with efficiency and gain, leading to the possibility of including social interaction and behaviour interaction in the breeding programmes.
Reducing environmental impact The pig sector’s aim to reduce its environmental footprint can be achieved through an increase in outputs while minimising inputs. To achieve that, improving feed efficiency and growth rates has been the focus of many pig breeding programmes in recent years. Although feed efficiency has been traditional- ly measured by using feed conversion ratio, mainly due to its easy calculation and interpretation, there is increased interest in developing and using new measures that depict feed efficiency more accurately. Some of these new feed efficiency traits include the use of traits such as feed saved, residual feed intake or direct inclu- sion of feed intake. All these measures are calculated based on a selection of animal performance measures usually in- cluding body weight, average daily gain, backfat thickness and muscle area as proxy traits for animal production needs. Thus, residual traits can be easily adopted by pig breeding companies to improve genetic gain towards more efficient pigs and improved farm profitability.
Improving feed efficiency Besides the benefits of reducing production costs (and in-
creasing resilience to fluctuating output prices), improving feed efficiency in pigs is particularly sensible given their di- rect competition with humans for edible energy and protein sources. Therefore, it is necessary to meet the demand for animal-derived products by producing animals that make better use of feedstuffs while reducing the impact of waste products. Genetic improvement for feed-efficient pigs has resulted in increased average daily gain and thus in substantial reduc- tion in the number of days from birth to slaughter. Addition- ally, improved lean meat content of the carcass, as lean pigs are better at converting feed nutrients into body resources, leads to better environmental and economic sustainability to feed the ever-increasing world population. Furthermore, improved feed efficiency is strongly associated with lower nitrogen and phosphorus excretions in growing pigs, thereby reducing their contribution to the eutrophica- tion and acidification of the environment. Moreover, more ef- ficient animals produce less greenhouse gas emissions and therefore contribute to less-polluted air. In conclusion, balanced breeding programmes have contrib- uted to the sustainability of pork production, and they can provide further through inclusion of welfare and behaviour traits as well as utilising new emerging technologies from gene editing, whole genome analysis, metagenomics and metabolomics technologies that accelerate genetic progress for complex traits of interest.
▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 1, 2021
Balanced breed- ing programmes will contribute to more resilient and sustainable pig production systems.
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