Genomic analyses of nitrogen utilization efficiency, its indicator trait blood urea nitrogen and the relationship to classical growth performance and feed efficiency traits in a Landrace × Piétrain crossbred population

© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd..

Improving the nutrient efficiency in pork production is required to reduce the resource competition between human food and animal feed regarding diet components edible for humans and to minimize emissions relevant to climate or the environment. Thereby, protein utilization efficiency and its equivalent nitrogen utilization efficiency (NUE) play a major role. Breeding for more nitrogen (N) efficient pigs bears a promising strategy to improve such traits, however, directly phenotyping NUE based on N balance data is neither cost-efficient nor straightforward and not applicable for routine evaluations. Blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels in the pig are suitable to predict the NUE and, therefore, might be an indicator trait for NUE because BUN is a relatively easy-to-measure trait. This study investigated the suitability of NUE as a selection trait in future breeding programs. The relationships to classical growth performance and feed efficiency traits were analysed as well as the relationship to BUN to infer the role of BUN as an indicator trait to improve NUE via breeding. The analyzes were based on a Landrace F1 cross population consisting of 502 individuals who descended from 20 Piétrain sires. All animals were genotyped for 48,525 SNPs. They were phenotyped in two different fattening phases, i.e., FP1 and FP2, during the experiment. Uni- and bivariate analyses were run to estimate variance components and to determine the genetic correlation between different traits or between the same trait measured at different time points. Moderate heritabilities were estimated for all traits, whereby the heritability for NUE was h2 = 0.293 in FP1 and h2 = 0.163 in FP2 and BUN had the by far highest heritability (h2 = 0.415 in FP1 and h2 = 0.460 in FP2). The significant genetic correlation between NUE and BUN showed the potential of BUN to be considered an indicator trait for NUE. This was particularly pronounced when NUE was measured in FP1 (genetic correlations r g = - 0.631 $$ {r}_g=-0.631 $$ and r g = - 0.688 $$ {r}_g=-0.688 $$ between NUE and BUN measured in FP1 and FP2, respectively). The genetic correlations of NUE and BUN with important production traits suggest selecting pigs with high growth rates and low BUN levels to breed more efficient pigs in future breeding programs.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - year:2024

Enthalten in:

Journal of animal breeding and genetics = Zeitschrift fur Tierzuchtung und Zuchtungsbiologie - (2024) vom: 25. März

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Schmid, Markus [VerfasserIn]
Weishaar, Ramona [VerfasserIn]
Seifert, Jana [VerfasserIn]
Camarinha-Silva, Amélia [VerfasserIn]
Rodehutscord, Markus [VerfasserIn]
Bennewitz, Jörn [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Blood urea nitrogen
Genetics
Indicator trait
Journal Article
Nitrogen utilization efficiency
Pig

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 25.03.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status Publisher

doi:

10.1111/jbg.12864

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM370156684