FEEDTHEPIG

Coordinator: DISTAL

Scientific Officer: Francesca Bertolini

Duration: 30/11/2023 - 29/11/2025

Research group: Francesca Bertolini, Paolo Zambonelli.

Sustainability in pig farming involves how animals are raised, the amount of resources used, animal welfare, the profitability of the farm, and, above all, its efficiency. All those elements determine the perception of farming by society and its impact on the environment. As we cope with fewer available resources and increasing feeding costs, improving feed efficiency (FE) has become a crucial aspect of sustainable farming. Selecting genetically superior pigs with improved FE is a strategy to reduce the amount of feed needed to produce meat and to reduce environmental wastes and emissions. However, FE is a difficult-to-measure trait, and genomics on traditional quantitative traits like FE does not guarantee the accuracy that is needed for an effective selection strategy. The goal of FEEDTHEPIG is to dissect FE in pigs taking advantage of metabolomics, transcriptomics and genomics to develop new strategies of selection that will improve the sustainability of the Italian pig production value chain. The project will focus on the two key breeds used for PDO drycured ham production, Italian Large White and Italian Duroc. To reach this goal, the project will take advantage of available genotypes (i.e 60K SNP chip), tissues, and production traits data of a large cohort of pigs of these two breeds. The animals with extremely high and low Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) will be selected and compared utilising 1) untargeted metabolomics, 2) metabolite Genome-Wide Association Studies (mGWAS) and 3) untargeted transcriptomics. The biological molecules that most discriminate these pigs opposite in FE performances will be used as markers for simulation studies including also the genotypes of the remaining pigs of the cohort, to implement advanced genomic selection programs. Here, the potential gain in the incorporation of these markers in relation with improved FE will be evaluated, as well as the relationship of these markers with other production traits routinely measured for those two breeds. FEEDTHEPIG will deliver molecular markers that will improve FE in Italian pigs. It will generate novel tools and methods for the exploitation of a new era of biomarkers and indicators in the pig sector to develop breeding strategies that will improve selection accuracy. In addition, it will develop novel phenotyping strategies and show how these can enable the creation of advanced breeding concepts to improve the sustainability of animal production systems. Ultimately, the project will contribute to developing the livestock management strategies of the future, which will have a substantial impact in a fundamental key scientific area that is crucial for the economic competitiveness of the Italian meat production sector.