Potential for improving the digestive efficiency of the three major French pig breeds. Potentiel d’amélioration de l’efficacité digestive dans les trois grandes races porcines françaises

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Carillier-Jacquin, Céline | Allen, Sonja | Ganier, Philippe | Bidanel, Joël | Hassenfratz, Claire | Blanchet, Benoit | Déru, Vanille | Gilbert, Hélène

Edité par CCSD ; Ifip -

International audience. Digestive efficiency of energy, organic matter and nitrogen, predicted by near-infrared spectrometry (NIRS), is a new indicator of interest for pig breeding schemes, making it possible to target the digestive component of feed efficiency. The objective of this study was to estimate genetic parameters of digestive efficiency coefficients (DC) for the three pig breeds that contribute the most to the terminal cross-bred pigs produced in France: Large White and Landrace for the dam lines, and Piétrain for the sire line. A simplified method was been developed for on-farm use. Faecal samples were collected at 21 weeks of age at INRAE’s Le Rheu testing station, frozen on site, and DCs for organic matter, energy, and nitrogen were predicted using a portable NIRS device immediately after defrosting. Genetic parameters (i.e. genetic variance, phenotypic variance and heritability) of DCs, as well as their genetic correlations with usual production traits (i.e. feed intake, growth rate, and backfat thickness) were estimated. The heritability of DCs were moderate in all three breeds (0.16 ± 0.16 to 0.26 ± 0.11), which is consistent with estimates reported in the literature using sample drying and a laboratory NIRS, which predicts using a wider range of wavelengths. The trends in genetic correlations withproduction traits were similar in the three breeds: favourable with feed intake, unfavourable with growth rate, and close to zero with carcass-composition traits (i.e. backfat thickness).

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