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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
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Pig breeding in Canada – Treena Hein 2017
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on May 1, 2017
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 from 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 create a germplasm repository for pigs and all other types of Canadian livestock.
Lessard is the curator of the Canadian Animal Genetic Resources program (CAGR) at the University of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan. CAGR is developing methods to produce embryos in the lab and freeze them for long-term preservation in order to preserve the full genome of the animal in the best manner available. The group is seeking funding to demonstrate that the stored embryos can be transferred and grow successfully in a recipient.
Proving the effectiveness of these preservation techniques will offer new tools for purebred producers and the swine industry in distributing genetics both nationally and internationally.
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.
Preservation of animals from different genetic backgrounds guarantees the availability of variation in the
future, in case of unpredicted environmental changes such as climate change and potential new disease outbreaks.
Through the industrialization of pig production and the development of pork products (driven by the demands of the consumers), several heritage pig breeds have been progressively discarded from commercial production placing them on endangered breed lists thus indicating the importance of preserving their genetics as soon as possible.
Pig breeding in Canada – Treena Hein 2017