Genetic parameters for performance and meat quality traits of crossbred pigs housed in two test environments

Genetic parameters were estimated for crossbred progeny of Bavarian Piétrain sires housed in two test environments on the two Bavarian test stations. The data contained 13,980 pigs housed in traditional pens for 2 pigs and 3,454 pigs housed in big pens for 10–14 pigs with automatic feeding system recorded between 2000 and 2004. In total, 584 sires having progeny in both housing systems were available to estimate genetic correlations between the two test environments. The analysis showed that the housing of pigs in big pens is more demanding with respect to the test design than in 2-pig pens. Further, the results show differences in both phenotypic performance and genetic parameters between the two environments. Daily gain is lower and lean meat content is higher in big pens with automatic feeding system. Therefore, it is suspected that pigs develop slower in the new housing due to a different feed intake behavior in comparison to 2-pig pens. This might be the main reason for the moderate genetic correlations among fattening performance traits (0.5–0.7 ± 0.13), which result in re-rankings of selection candidates depending which kind of information is utilized. Genetic correlations of slaughter and meat quality traits, however, are close to 1. Differences between the variance components in the two test stations have been found and simple pooling of data is problematic with respect to the breeding value estimation.