Potential applications of genomic selection in pig breeding schemes

Genomic evaluation, a new methodology to estimate the breeding value of livestock, is currently revolutionizing dairy cattle breeding, and its implementation in pigs is being considered. In this species, genomic selection could be used to improve populations for traits too costly to be recorded routinely, to increase the accuracy of the estimated breeding values, and to select the nucleus populations for their crossbred value expressed in a commercial environment. The implementation of genomic selection in pigs would be costly, mainly because of the size of the reference populations required to estimate accurate breeding values, the high number of candidates that should be genotyped, and the large number of selected lines. The sharing of reference populations by several breeding organizations and the use of genotype imputation techniques would help reduce the implementation costs.