The Human Genome Project took almost 15 years to complete and cost a whopping 
$3.8 billion.
In science speak the project — officially launched in 1990 and completed in 2003 — was undertaken to determine the sequence of nucleotide base pairs which make up human DNA. It turns out there are about three billion of those pairs.
The same sequencing was done with cattle and hogs. From those studies came information that can be used in labs and on farms. Hogs can now be evaluated for approximately $20 each.
That’s a lot of change in a relatively short time Murray Duggan of Fast Genetics told those attending the Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium.
Duggan, a senior geneticist for the Saskatoon-based company, said the use of genomics gives producers the information they need to keep the best of the best in their barns.
“One of the really neat things about genomic evaluations is as soon as we can get a genotype on an animal, within a month or less of birth, we can already get a pretty accurate evaluation of that animal’s future potential,” he said.
This compares with the almost two years it took for a producer to make an educated guess about the potential of a boar. Duggan said a judgment couldn’t be made until the boar’s daughters had litters. In many operations, the boar would be isolated while the producer waited to assess those litters. Time is money.
Producers can now use science when it comes to deciding which boars to keep and which should be sent to market.
“With pigs, you are dealing with a high productive rate and a short generation interval, so one sow and one boar can create a lot of new pigs in a year. At the historical prices for sequencing or genotyping that was not practical because of the number of animals that were involved.
“But with cheap, economical, good-quality genomic evaluations now, it is practical to do every selection candidate and then we can make our decisions on which ones we want to keep for further testing and which ones we can eliminate immediately as not quite being good enough.”
Genomics has other advantages, Duggan said.
“In pigs, we are all about production efficiency, carcass and meat quality. The production efficiency traits in the maternal line are litter size, the ability to raise a large litter of pigs, large weaning weights and a sow that rebreeds quickly and reliably.
“On the terminal side, we are looking at things like rapid growth rate and a carcass that hangs up and is a pork cut people want to buy. We will have more accurate pedigrees. We will have better evaluations earlier in life. We will also be able to do things like trace a pork chop back to its sire and therefore to the herd of origin, so we can use it for DNA-based traceability.”
Duggan said genomics has revolutionized the dairy industry.
A couple of years after the $3.8 billion was spent on human testing, a Hereford cow from Nebraska was sequenced for $53 million. It cost “only” $25 million to sequence the first pig, Duggan said with a smile.
“All the genos are approximately the same size, so this is really just a function of better technology and better methods of doing things as we went along.”
He said information can now be gathered from a cow for $400.
“A dairy cow is a high-value animal and they have a low reproductive rate, so to go and genotype a dairy bull or even an elite dairy cow, $400 doesn’t sound too bad. To genotype a sow in a genetic nucleus herd, $400 is a pretty big deal. Nobody’s going to really do that.”
They are doing it for $20 per hog though.
“I think our industry is ready to take advantage. Most of the breeding companies are actively using geno evaluations now. They have become a normal part of life and genetic progress is really improving because of that. Selection progress in the pig industry is ramping up very quickly.” •
— By Cam Hutchinson
