Abstract:Based on the brief reviewing of swine breeding in the world and analysis the problems in swine breeding in China, the program of national and regional swine genetic evaluation was discussed; the necessary of establishing genetic connectedness between swine farms was also debated. Finally, the future swine breeding strategy and crucial works in China were suggested.

Abstract:The perspective and importance of molecular breeding is discussed,and the current status of the application of genomic technologies in animal breeding reviewed in this paper.

Abstract:The swine industry in China is a thrivingand evolving industry that has shown phenome-nal growth over the past10years.Newand mod-ern swine farms have been started in locationsacross the country.Genetics has been importedfrom many different countries in an effort to up-grade the quality and efficiency of the traditionalbreeds of swine.But to insure long term successand viability in a worldwide competitive industrysuch as pork,there is need for a National SwineGenetic Improvement Program.This programneeds to ...

Abstract:The first swine testing station and program in the world was started in Denmark.Denmark has tested breeding and genetics traits of pigs for more than 100 years and have developed an efficient structure and system to select pigs which produce quality pork for the consumer. The Danish pork is exported to many countries around the world.The testing programs described in the article have proven to be very successful over the last 100 years.The history of swine testing for superior pigs is not finished yet.The selection criteria for quality swine breeding animals will also need to be updated on a regular time table because the production systems are changing yearly and new environmental codes and animal welfare regulations are added each year so the testing programs on pig farms also need to change to meet the new production standards.It is not uncommon to obtain some unusual traits when selecting for extreme traits in pigs when they are on testing programs.When these traits are obtained, it requires additional testing to remove these traits.An example would be the Porcine Stress Syndrome.Osteochondrosis is another example.The gene mapping research will also open up new directions for swine testing programs.Therefore, as long as we produce pigs for quality pork and efficient production we will need outstanding swine testing programs.

Abstract:For a long time,purebred pigs were evalua-ted in a nucleus for several growth,meat qualityand reproduction traits including growth,backfatand number of piglets alive[1].The evaluationwas using BLUP with all traits treated as linearand also assuming a normal distribution.Ani-mals down the pyramid were not evaluated;itwas assumed that most if not all of the gains ofselection at the nucleus level transferred to thecommercial level.The selection based on the e-valuations seemed to be successful as all thetraits...

Abstract:The history of swine breeding improvement in Southeast Asia during the recent fifty years was reviewed. The progress and present breeding structure of swine breeding in Charoen Pokphand Co. LTD was discussed. Also, the swine breeding principles, genetic correlations between traits, heterosis utilization, relation between breeding and environment, promotion of market requirement, etc, were discussed. Based on the experience of fifty years work on swine production, the author gave some valuable suggestion for the swine breeding in Southeast Asia.

Abstract:Recently,several computer packages havebeen developed to accomplish problems relatedto mixed model in animal breeding.Special soft-ware for estimation of variance components andprediction of genetic merits are basically neededfor genetic evaluation and selection program.Al-though there are some packages available on theinternet,however,most of them are commercialor unfriendly to be used.The lists of recent soft-ware available on the internet are shown in Tab.1.Most software is free license(mostly for ac-ade...

Abstract:The goal of any swine genetic improvementprogram is rapid genetic progress in economical-ly important traits.Two keys for significant ge-netic improvement are identification of whichtraits are the most important and accurate re-cords of performance for those traits.Tremen-dous progress has been made in the swine indus-try in the reducing backfat and increasing leanmeat percentage over the past decade.In recentyears,meat quality traits have received more at-tention and have become more important inbreeding p...

Abstract:Advances in molecular genetics have opened opportunities to enhance strategies for genetic improvement of livestock by directly selecting on genes or chromosomal regions that harbor genes that affect traits of interest, so-called quantitative trait loci (QTL). Detection and use of QTL relies on presence of linkage disequilibrium between genetic markers that can be genotyped and QTL. The nature of linkage disequilibrium that exists in populations or that can be created in experimental populations and its use in QTL detection and marker-assisted selection are reviewed. Limitations and opportunities for alternate strategies for marker-assisted selection are outlined. The main conclusion is that opportunities for use of marker-assisted selection to enhance rates of genetic improvement exist, in particular using population-wide disequilibrium, but they require careful analysis and implementation in existing breeding programs.