Evaluation of Yorkshire and Landrace Animals with Regard to Lineage Assignment and PRKAG3, MC4R, and MYOD1 Marker Gene Panel

Abstract

The animal breeding properties may be improved through the integrated use of the common breeding methods and the modern technologies for DNA-based molecular genetic markers associated with the economically important traits. Livestock breeding industry requirements for effective DNA marking the animal production performance traits tend to increase each year, which ensures the real relevance of research in this sphere. The objective of the surveys is to evaluate the Yorkshire and Landrace pigs with regard to the lineage assignment with the PRKAG3, MC4R, and MYOD1 marker-gene panel. The surveys were carried out with the populations of Yorkshire and Landrace animals within the lineages in Minsk oblast in 2019–2020. At the first stage of surveys, the pedigree young stock was evaluated based on the production performance parameters. At the second stage, fattening and meat-quality parameters were assessed. In order to study polymorphisms in the PRKAG3, MC4R, and MYOD1 genes, the ear tissue biosamples taken from the analyzed animals were used. DNA isolation was performed with the Nucleo-Sorb reagents (Praimtech, Belarus). The analysis of gene polymorphisms was performed with the PCR-RFLP method. In the analyzed animals, the frequencies of occurrence of the preference alleles at the gene markers for fattening and meat-quality performance traits were recorded. They comprised 0.171–0.288, 0.243–0.315, and 0.064–0.477 for PRKAG3I, MC4RA, and MYOD1C, respectively. With respect to the Yorkshire breed, the lineage of Dobryi 2313 was considered best among the analyzed lineages. Its representatives were more efficient in the fattening and meat-quality performance than the animals of the other lineages by 1.2–19.3%. With respect to the Landrace breed, the lineage of Dantes 5440 was considered most efficient, since its values for production performance were 0.3–9.8% higher than the breed averages. The use of the tested development in the pig breeding industry can provide the opportunity to accelerate the management of selective-breeding practice in order to improve the fattening and meat-quality performance in the breeding herds of the analyzed animals built at the lineage level.