Heritability of body length and measures of body density and their relationship to backfat thickness and loin muscle area in swine

The objective of this study was to estimate heritability for body length (LEN) at the end of performance testing and to estimate genetic correlations with backfat (BF) thickness and loin muscle area (LMA) in Landrace, Yorkshire, Duroc, and Hampshire breeds of swine. Also examined were two measures of body density involving body length and weight and their relationships to backfat and loin muscle area. Data consisted of performance test records collected in a commercial swine operation from 1992 to 1999. Boars from 60% of the litters were culled at weaning based on a maternal breeding value of the dam. Remaining boars and all females were grown to 100 d of age (15,594, 55,497, 12,267, and 9,782 Landrace, Yorkshire, Duroc, and Hampshire pigs, respectively). At this time, all pigs were weighed (WT100) and selected for performance testing based on a combination of maternal and performance indexes, which differed by breed. All pigs were weighed at the end of the 77 d performance test (WT177) when BF, LMA, and LEN were measured. Two measures of body density involving length were calculated: Body mass index (BMI) = WT177/LEN2 and body density (DENSITY) = WT177/LEN. For each breed, genetic parameters were estimated using an animal model with random litter effects and multiple-trait REML procedures. A series of three-trait models including WT100 and combinations of two other traits in each analysis was conducted. Fixed effects included contemporary group and age as a covariate. Average estimates of heritability were 0.16 to 0.32 for LEN (unadjusted for WT177), 0.12 to 0.26 for LEN (adjusted for WT177), 0.23 to 0.33 for DENSITY, and 0.16 to 0.25 for BMI. Genetic correlations between LEN and LMA were low. Genetic correlations between LEN (unadjusted for WT177) and BF were 0.10 to 0.41. Adjusting LEN for WT177 gave correlations of 0.11 for Landrace and Hampshire and negative correlations (−0.06 and −0.19, respectively) for Yorkshire and Duroc. Genetic correlations between LMA and DENSITY and between LMA and BMI were comparable and ranged from 0.44 to 0.54. Genetic correlations between BF and DENSITY were slightly higher (0.53 to 0.68) than those between BF and BMI (0.37 to 0.67). In these data, not much relationship between BF and body length at a constant weight and age was found. There was a negative relationship between LMA and LEN at a constant weight and age, implying that longer pigs had smaller LMA.