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Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level
BACKGROUND: In polytocous livestock species, litter size and offspring weight act antagonistically; in modern pig breeds, selection for increased litter size has resulted in lower mean birth weights, an increased number of small piglets and an increased number of those affected by varying degrees of...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145367/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30227828 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12711-018-0417-7 |
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author | Matheson, Stephanie M. Walling, Grant A. Edwards, Sandra A. |
author_facet | Matheson, Stephanie M. Walling, Grant A. Edwards, Sandra A. |
author_sort | Matheson, Stephanie M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In polytocous livestock species, litter size and offspring weight act antagonistically; in modern pig breeds, selection for increased litter size has resulted in lower mean birth weights, an increased number of small piglets and an increased number of those affected by varying degrees of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). IUGR poses life-long challenges, both mental, with morphological brain changes and altered cognition, and physical, such as immaturity of organs, reduced colostrum intake and weight gain. In pigs, head morphology of newborn piglets is a good phenotypic marker for identifying such compromised piglets. Growth retardation could be considered as a property of the dam, in part due to either uterine capacity or insufficiency. A novel approach to this issue is to consider the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter as an indirect measure of uterine capacity. However, uterine capacity or sufficiency cannot be equated solely to litter size and thus is a trait difficult to measure on farm. RESULTS: A total of 21,159 Landrace × Large White or Landrace × White Duroc piglets (born over 52 weeks) with recorded head morphology and birth weights were followed from birth until death or weaning. At the piglet level, the estimated heritability for IUGR (as defined by head morphology) was low at 0.01 ± 0.01. Piglet direct genetic effects of birth weight (h(2) = 0.07 ± 0.02) were strongly negatively correlated with head morphology (− 0.93), in that IUGR-affected piglets tended to have lower birth weights. At the sow level, analysis of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter gave a heritability of 0.20 ± 0.06, with high and negative genetic correlations of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets with average offspring birth weight (− 0.90) and with the proportion of piglets surviving until 24 h (− 0.80). CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter is a suitable indirect measure of uterine capacity for inclusion in breeding programmes that aim at reducing IUGR in piglets and improving piglet survival. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6145367 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61453672018-09-24 Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level Matheson, Stephanie M. Walling, Grant A. Edwards, Sandra A. Genet Sel Evol Research Article BACKGROUND: In polytocous livestock species, litter size and offspring weight act antagonistically; in modern pig breeds, selection for increased litter size has resulted in lower mean birth weights, an increased number of small piglets and an increased number of those affected by varying degrees of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). IUGR poses life-long challenges, both mental, with morphological brain changes and altered cognition, and physical, such as immaturity of organs, reduced colostrum intake and weight gain. In pigs, head morphology of newborn piglets is a good phenotypic marker for identifying such compromised piglets. Growth retardation could be considered as a property of the dam, in part due to either uterine capacity or insufficiency. A novel approach to this issue is to consider the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter as an indirect measure of uterine capacity. However, uterine capacity or sufficiency cannot be equated solely to litter size and thus is a trait difficult to measure on farm. RESULTS: A total of 21,159 Landrace × Large White or Landrace × White Duroc piglets (born over 52 weeks) with recorded head morphology and birth weights were followed from birth until death or weaning. At the piglet level, the estimated heritability for IUGR (as defined by head morphology) was low at 0.01 ± 0.01. Piglet direct genetic effects of birth weight (h(2) = 0.07 ± 0.02) were strongly negatively correlated with head morphology (− 0.93), in that IUGR-affected piglets tended to have lower birth weights. At the sow level, analysis of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter gave a heritability of 0.20 ± 0.06, with high and negative genetic correlations of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets with average offspring birth weight (− 0.90) and with the proportion of piglets surviving until 24 h (− 0.80). CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter is a suitable indirect measure of uterine capacity for inclusion in breeding programmes that aim at reducing IUGR in piglets and improving piglet survival. BioMed Central 2018-09-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6145367/ /pubmed/30227828 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12711-018-0417-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Matheson, Stephanie M. Walling, Grant A. Edwards, Sandra A. Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title | Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title_full | Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title_fullStr | Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title_full_unstemmed | Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title_short | Genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
title_sort | genetic selection against intrauterine growth retardation in piglets: a problem at the piglet level with a solution at the sow level |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6145367/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30227828 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12711-018-0417-7 |
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