Estimation of genetic parameters for longitudinal measurements of feed intake in Piétrain sire lines

The aim of this study was to estimate the genetic parameters for longitudinal measurements of feed intake (FI) in a crossbred population of pigs to develop a genetic evaluation model for the estimation of breeding values for FI of Piétrain boars. Data were collected on crossbred pigs in test station in the context of the genetic evaluation system of Piétrain boars in the Walloon Region of Belgium. Trait analyzed was daily FI (DFI). Because there were no facilities to record individual DFI in the Walloon test station, individual DFI were assumed to be the total pen FI divided by the number of pigs per pen. The edited dataset consisted of 3,902 measurements of DFI recorded on 1,975 crossbred pigs from 75 purebred Piétrain sires and 150 Landrace dams from the hyperprolific Landrace K+ line. A random regression animal model with fixed effects of sex and pen, and random effects of additive genetic, permanent environment and residual was developed in this study. Random additive genetic and permanent environment effects were modeled with linear splines with knots located at 75, 100, 175 and 210 d. The mean DFI was 1.979 kg/d with a SD of 0.479 kg/d. Estimated heritability for DFI increased with age from 0.02 at 75 d to 0.30 at 210 d. Estimated genetic correlation between age decreased when age interval increased. These preliminary results are consistent with literature. However, additional research are ongoing to test alternative random regression models that should be better than using splines for longitudinal performance of DFI. Furthermore, genetic relationship between DFI and other production traits, like growth and carcass traits, must be analyzed.