Genetic improvement of pig sire lines for production performances in crossbreeding

Crossbreeding is widely used in pig breeding to benefit from advantages of heterosis effects and breed complementarity. Breeding programs are specialized between sire and dam lines, with different selection objectives. Sire lines are mainly selected for production traits (e.g., growth, carcass quality, feed efficiency). Moreover, selection is often in purebred lines while the goal of selection is to improve crossbred performances. Hence, genetic selection of purebred parents involved in crossbreeding requires models accounting for crossbreeding effects, and able to combine data from different genetic types (purebreds and crossbreds) and different environmental conditions. Therefore, the objective of this thesis was to develop genetic models to estimate genetic parameters and breeding values for production traits in crossbred populations of pigs. A genetic model was developed to estimate the genetic potential of Walloon purebred Piétrain boars for growth performances in crossbreeding based on test station and on-farm data from purebred and crossbred pigs. Weight records from both systems were considered as different traits. Results showed that weights recorded in test station and on-farm were different traits but genetically correlated. Moreover, combining both sources of data allowed to increase reliability of estimated breeding values and Genotype x Environment interactions were detected for growth in the Walloon breeding program. The introduction of dominance effects, linked to crossbreeding, into the genetic model for growth in the crossbred population showed that dominance effects existed on growth of crossbred pigs. Moreover, the total and the additive genetic merits were better estimated than with a strictly additive model. Research conducted on commercial crossbred data from US Duroc sires displayed that the sire genetic effects were not negligible on traits like piglet birth weight, preweaning mortality, mortality at different stages of the grow-finishing period and hot carcass weight. Furthermore, sire genetic effects increased with age. Genetic studies of mortality in the population from US Duroc sires showed that mortality traits had a low heritability, increasing with age and that mortality was not antagonistic with market weight. Besides, genetic parameters estimated for birth weight and its relation with other production traits in crossbred populations from Piétrain and Duroc sires showed that birth weight could be used as an early indicator trait to improve latter performances. Finally, production traits were genetically correlated and should be selected simultaneously to reach the breeding goal