Affiliation:
1. National Engineering Research Center For Breeding Swine Industry, College of Animal Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, People’s Republic of China.
2. WENS Foodstuff Group Co., Ltd., Xinxing 527400, People’s Republic of China.
Abstract
This study compared the estimates of variance components using various animal models for Large White pigs. The traits included three production traits, birth weight (BW), age at 100 kg (Age_100), and backfat thickness at 100 kg (BF_100), and two reproduction traits, number of total born (NTB) and the ratio of healthy births (RHB). Five models including or ignoring common litter environmental effects, maternal effects, and the direct-maternal covariance (σam) were used for this study. The results showed that the model including all terms, or including all terms except σam, yielded the best-fitting result. The direct variance and heritability were overestimated when the model ignored all previously listed effects, especially for production traits. When all terms were modeled, the direct heritability estimates ([Formula: see text] ± standard error) were 0.038 ± 0.008, 0.216 ± 0.022, 0.416 ± 0.023, 0.066 ± 0.013, and 0.049 ± 0.007 for BW, Age_100, BF_100, NTB, and RHB, respectively. The common litter effects reached statistical significance for all traits, and maternal heritability reached statistical significance for three production traits. The direct-maternal correlations were negative for all traits but only reached statistical significance for BW. These results indicate that using a more complex model may result in more accurate estimation of variance components in Large White pigs.
Publisher
Canadian Science Publishing
Subject
Animal Science and Zoology,Food Animals
Cited by
3 articles.
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