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CANDIDATE MUTATIONS IN BMPR1B AFFECTING PIG PROLIFICACY

Mengmeng Zhang, Shiwei Wang, Yijun Liu, Yuan-Ming Zhang, Keliang Wu*

Owing to China having the world’s largest pig inventory and being the world’s largest consumer of pork, the importance of its pig industry is difficult to overstate. The improvement of reproductive traits such as litter size, would increase industrial competitiveness and give producers an economic boost. For example, if the number of live-born piglets per litter were increased by just one, an average producer could realize an additional 100~150 Yuans (RMB) per year. How to achieve this is the key issue for many of China’s pork producers. In general, the reproductive traits of female pigs have low heritability, (i.e. the heritability of litter size is approximately 0.10 (Rothschild, 1996). As we know, there are numerous swine breeds indigenous to China, many with the genetic characteristic of high fecundity. After breeding programs in Europe and North America introduced traits of the Taihu breed into their own domestic stock, those sows realized and average of 1.6 more piglets per litter (Webb, 1998). This commentary is a synopsis for pig producers and researchers about what we currently know about the hyperprolificacy of the Taihu pig.