New hog strain to cut reliance on imported boars

Authorities have recently approved a homegrown breeding system for a fast-growing hog strain called Lansi pig, helping to lessen China's reliance on imported boars in hog production.

After 14 years of painstaking research, the national livestock and poultry genetic resources committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in March approved the commercial application of Lansi pig's complete set line — the genetic foundation for the new breeding system.

The system was developed by a research team led by Li Kui from the Agricultural Genomics Institute, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

According to Li, the Lansi pig strain was developed based on global mainstream commercial pig breeds using advanced biological breeding technologies, such as molecular marker-assisted breeding and whole-genome-assisted breeding.

Compared with its ancestors, Lansi pig has shown stronger resistance to diseases, in addition to other improved economic traits such as growth rate, he said.

Over the past 14 years, the team has created a complete set line of over 2,000 foundation stock pigs, and developed a series of software and database to bolster breeding efficiency.

Li said the rollout of Lansi pig offers valuable lessons for improving other imported pig varieties.

More than 90 percent boars used in commercial breeding in China are imported breeds, Li said, adding that there has long been a dire need for domestically bred high-efficiency and high-quality pig breeds such as Lansi pig.