Correlated responses in reproductive and carcass traits were studied in 181 litters and 218 pigs from a line of Landrace pigs selected six generations for increased weight at 70 d of age and a contemporaneous, randomly selected control line. The reproductive and maternal traits studied included litter sizes born, born alive, and alive at 21 d and litter weight at birth and at 21 d. Carcass trai...

Methods: Forty–eight barrows were selected at 11 weeks of age from a commercial nursery and randomly assigned either to the environments of the adjoining commercial grower and finisher buildings (n=24) (COMM group) or an unrestricting research environment (n=24) (UNRES group). Pigs were weighed at biweekly intervals from placement at 30 kg (65 lb) liveweight until slaughter. Backfat thickness a...

The challenge to the pork industry is to produce lean pigs without compromising pork quality. The leanest genotypes of pigs have poorer muscle quality (lower color scores, lower percent intramuscular fat, greater drip loss) and poorer fat quality (soft, unsliceable bellies) in comparison to genotypes with average leanness. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) refers to a group of linoleic acid isomer...

Acyl-coenzyme A oxidase 1 (ACOX1) is the first enzyme in peroxisomal fatty acid β-oxidation; it is rate-limiting and plays a key role in fatty acid metabolism and fat deposition. ACOX1 is an important candidate gene for meat quality selection through marker-assisted selection. Genomic structural analysis showed that bovine ACOX1 shares 86% identity with human ACOX1. Using PCR-SSCP technolo...

For many species several similar QTL mapping populations have been produced and analyzed independently. Joint analysis of such data could be used to increase power to detect QTL and evaluate population differences. In this study, data were collated on almost 3000 pigs from seven different F(2) crosses between Western commercial breeds and either the European wild boar or the Chinese Meishan bre...

Adipose tissue development was studied histochemically and histologically in fetuses from lean and obese sows. At 110 days of gestation, fetuses were removed from Ossabaw (obese-feral) sows and from sows selected for high backfat (obese-domestic) and for low backfat (lean) thickness. Body weights were similar for lean (916 +/- 225 g) and obese (822 +/- 167 g) domestic fetuses, whereas obese fer...

Piétrain (P), Large White (LW) and Belgian Landrace stress negative (BN) boars were slaughtered at 50, 70, 90 or 110 kg live weight to investigate breed differences and the effect of slaughter weight on boar taint prevalence. Boar taint was quantified by four different methodologies: sensory evaluation of neckfat heated with a hot iron in the slaughterhouse, sensory evaluation of meat by consum...

CMYA4 (cardiomyopathy-associated 4) gene plays an important role in thick filament assembly. In this study, we obtained the mRNA sequence including the full coding sequence and the partial 5' untranslated region of the porcine CMYA4 gene by using the rapid amplification of cDNA ends and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and the sequence was deposited in the GenBank nucleo...

The effects of housing and nutrition on the performance of growing gilts of the Nepalese Pakhribas breed were investigated. A total of 36 pigs were allocated according to a factorial design with 3 levels of nutrition, provided to achieve a target growth rate of 200, 300 or 400 g/day, and two types of housing, traditional or improved. The growth rate and body composition were monitored during th...