Development of Economic Methodology to Incorporate Robustness in Pig Breeding Programs

Improving robustness is based on improving health and survival of pigs as well as reducing environmental sensitivity and variability in performance. Selection for improved robustness requires economic values for survival of pigs from birth to slaughter, sow longevity and for maternal genetic effects affecting growth of progeny. Further, new methodology is required to quantify economic importance of environmental sensitivity and variability in performance of pigs within batches in selection strategies. The breeding objective defines the selection emphasis placed on individual traits based on the economic importance of each trait. Economic values for some performance traits had been derived for Australian conditions earlier. However, economic values for traits describing aspects of robustness were not available. Further, breeders required greater flexibility in the setup of company-specific breeding objectives. The aims of this Project were to develop a user-friendly tool to derive economic values for a wider range of traits and to present concepts and methodology to quantify economic importance of environmental sensitivity and batch variability.