Genetic parameters for uniformity of fattening pigs’ growth traits

In livestock, uniformity of optimum traits is highly desirable because of its advantages throughout the production chain, such as an improved animal welfare, quality of the end product and automation of the process. Recent evidence in different livestock species confirms the existence of a genetic basis for environmental variance (). This implies the possibility to genetically select breeding animals towards an increased uniformity of their offspring. In this study, genetic parameters of were estimated using the double hierarchical generalized linear model (DHGLM) framework in R. This was done in pigs for the traits average daily gain from birth until a test period (ADG0) and during the test period (ADGtest) and age at slaughter (AGE). Results show values of 24-27%, meaning that one generation of selection can reduce the of these traits with 24-27%. However, low ℎ 2 values (0.006-0.008) indicate that a large dataset is needed to obtain accurate estimated breeding values for . For application in practice the accuracies need to be increased significantly. Furthermore, the use of adequate data transformation techniques for the estimation of the genetic correlation between mean and environmental variance appears necessary to counter scale effects.status: accepte