The effect of the proportion of Modern European ancestry on grower and sow performance of pigs in smallholder systems in Uganda

Frontiers in Genetics

Genetics

Johann Sölkner¹  Maria Wurzinger¹  Gábor Mészáros¹  Brian Martin Babigumira²  Christina Pfeiffer³  Emily Ouma⁴  Ben Lukuyu⁴  Karen Marshall⁵  Craig R. G. Lewis⁶ 

[1] Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Division of Livestock Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria;Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Division of Livestock Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria;International Livestock Research Institute, Kampala, Uganda;Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Division of Livestock Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria;PIG Austria GmbH, Steinhaus, Austria;International Livestock Research Institute, Kampala, Uganda;International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya;Pig Improvement Company, Barcelona, Spain;

关键词: pig;    growth;    litter size;    genotype;    smallholder;    Uganda;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fgene.2023.1123826

 received in 2022-12-14, accepted in 2023-08-21,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Several factors, including breed, lead to divergent performance of pigs for production and reproduction traits in different environments. A recent genomics study showed that Modern European (ME) pig breeds contribute to the ancestry of smallholder pigs in the Hoima and Kamuli districts, Uganda. These pigs were also involved in a longitudinal study with several traits recorded, including 540 body weights (WT) of 374 growing pigs, 195 records of total number of piglets born alive (TBA) of 157 sows, and 110 total number weaned (TNW) records of 94 sows. Linear mixed-effects models were used to test for the significance of environmental effects, including housing system, geographic location, and the season when the events occurred as well as animal-specific effects like age, sex, parity, and farrow-to-weaning interval. Stepwise model reduction starting from models with all main effects and pairwise interactions was applied. The final models were then expanded to include proportions of Modern European (ME) ancestry for the subset of animals genotyped, following genomic ancestry analysis based on a Porcine 50K SNP Chip. ME ancestry proportions ranged from 0.02 to 0.50 and were categorized into three classes (low/medium/high ME) based on 33.3% quantiles. The effects of ME classes on WT and TBA were not significant. ME showed a significant effect on TNW. Sows with a high proportion of ME weaned 2.4 piglets more than the low group, the medium ME group being intermediate. This study used genomic data to investigate the effects of genetic ancestry on the performance of smallholder pigs in Uganda. The proportion of Modern European ancestry did not exceed 0.50, therefore not allowing for the comparison of local versus pure “exotic” types of pigs. For the range of ancestries observed, which is the relevant one for current smallholder systems in Uganda, differences were small for the body weight of growing pigs and the number of piglets born alive, while higher proportions of ME ancestry resulted in significantly more piglets weaned. The availability of genotypes of a higher number of growing pigs would have been beneficial for drawing conclusions on the effect of ME ancestry on the growth rates of smallholder pigs in Uganda.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Babigumira, Sölkner, Mészáros, Wurzinger, Pfeiffer, Lewis, Lukuyu, Ouma and Marshall.