A Senior Geneticist with Fast Genetics says the use of Genomics to identify the presence of desirable traits has accelerated the evaluations of breeding stock within the swine industry.
Genomics is the study of the genome of an animal or an organism.
Murray Duggan, a Senior Geneticist with Fast Genetics, explains the genome of pigs have 19 pairs of chromosomes, 18 autosomes, one set of sex chromosomes and strung together approximately 2.8 billion base pairs, and there's little difference in size from the pig to the humans to cattle.
Murray Duggan-Fast Genetics:
In pigs we're all about production efficiency, carcass and meat quality basically, so the production efficiency traits in maternal lines, litter size, the ability to raise a large litter of pigs, large weaning weights, a sow that rebreeds quickly and reliably and will continue to do that for six or eight or more parities in a commercial herd.
On the terminal side we're looking for things like rapid growth rate, good feed conversion and a carcass that hangs up and is a carcass and a pork cut that people want to buy, that consumers want to buy.
Source : Farmscape