Dr. Carl Lessard and his colleagues are calling out to purebred swine producers and other livestock producers across the nation for donations of sperm and eggs\u00a0from purebred animals in all areas of the country, including poultry, bison, cattle, sheep, goat, horse, pig, deer, elk and more. The goal of this project is to\u00a0create\u00a0a germplasm repository for pigs and all other types of Canadian livestock.<\/p>\n
Lessard is the curator of the Canadian Animal Genetic Resources program (CAGR) at the University of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan.\u00a0CAGR is\u00a0developing methods to produce embryos in the lab and freeze\u00a0them for long-term preservation in order to preserve the full genome of the animal in the best manner available.\u00a0The group is\u00a0seeking funding to demonstrate\u00a0that the stored embryos can be transferred and grow\u00a0successfully in a recipient.<\/p>\n
Proving the effectiveness of these preservation techniques will offer\u00a0new tools for purebred producers and the swine industry in distributing genetics both nationally and internationally.<\/p>\n
There is also value in genetic preservation of heritage breeds. CCSI geneticist Dr. Mohsen Jafarikia says one potential application of heritage breed genes is their use as genetic markers, which can be used to improve certain traits in commercial breeds.<\/p>\n
Preservation of animals from different genetic\u00a0backgrounds guarantees the availability of variation in the
\nfuture, in case of unpredicted environmental changes such as\u00a0climate change and\u00a0potential new disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n
Through the industrialization of pig production and the development of pork products (driven by the demands of the consumers), several heritage pig breeds have\u00a0been progressively discarded from commercial production placing them on endangered breed lists thus indicating the importance of preserving their genetics as soon as possible.<\/p>\n