Genomic assessment of suitability of pigs for inclusion in the Pied Danish Pig conservation program – A case study

ABSTRACT

Breed assignment was performed for pigs putatively belonging to Pied Danish Pigs, an endangered Danish conservation breed. DNA array data were available for the candidates who had insufficient pedigree information. So were data for a reference population of animals from Danish conservation breeds as well as data from a range of Northern European pig breeds, and wild boar. Breed proportions were estimated using the program ADMIXTURE. Half the candidates were found to have at least 95% of their ancestry from Pied Danish Pigs. Several candidates showed varying degrees of admixture with other breeds, most notably Gloucester Old Spot. The same was observed for several of the Pied Danish Pig reference animals. The analyzes identified suitable breeding candidates and prevented unwanted recent admixture from spreading in the breeding population.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation
• breed
• admixture
• molecular information
• Sus scrofa

Acknowledgements

We thank authors making their data constituting the international reference population available. This work was supported in part by a grant 14-32640-000015 from the NaturErhvervstyrelsen of the Danish Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Bernt Guldbrandtsen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1764-135X

Vivi H. Nielsen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8870-7902

Anna A. Schönherz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5057-9351

Additional information

Funding

We thank authors making their data constituting the international reference population available. This work was supported in part by a grant 14-32640-000015 from NaturErhvervstyrelsen of the Danish Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries; Miljø- og Fødevareministeriet.