Pig breeding: not only to break the monopoly, but also to move towards the high-end
Win the battle of livestock breeding ①
Editor's note Not long ago, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "National Livestock and Poultry Genetic Improvement Plan (2021-2035)", which is the second round of the national-level livestock and poultry genetic improvement plan. The main direction of advancing the high-quality development of the livestock and poultry seed industry is an important action to ensure that the seed source is autonomous and controllable, and to make a turnaround in the seed industry.
To this end, this edition launched a series of reports on "Winning the Battle of Livestock and Poultry Breeding", focusing on the three major livestock and poultry varieties of pigs, cattle, and chickens, and discussing their problems in breeding, their achievements, and future development directions.
Many people may not know that the dishes we eat with local characteristics may be "imported".
Take twice-cooked pork, pork vermicelli and other common meat dishes, almost imported pig breeds such as Landrace, Dabai and Duroc are used.
my country is the largest country in the world for pig production and pork consumption. The pig industry is the pillar industry of my country's animal husbandry and even agriculture, and the breeding pig is the "chip" of the pig industry.
How about the research status of pig breeding improvement in my country's pig industry? Can it break the monopoly of developed countries on the top breeding pig market and solve the "stuck neck" problem of my country's pig industry?
On July 8, the reporter walked into the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry and conducted an interview.
The National Pig Technology Innovation Center, organized by the Chongqing Municipal Science and Technology Bureau and led by the institute, was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology in March this year. One of the center's key core technology research goals is to target the innovative use of germplasm resources.
The situation of re-introduction rather than selective breeding must be changed
In fact, there are many local breeds of live pigs in my country. According to statistics, there are 83 local breeds. In Chongqing alone, there are 5 local breeds including Rongchang pig, Hechuan black pig, Luopanshan pig, Quxi pig, and Penzhou mountain pig.
However, due to insufficient protection and development of high-quality local pig breeds and high-performance pig breeds relying on imports, the pig industry is trapped in the "introduction-degradation-introduction" cycle.
"For the modern pig breeding industry, it is required for pigs to live more, die less, grow faster, eat less, produce more meat, have good meat quality, and sell for a good price." said Wang Jinyong, a researcher at the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry. The advantages of pig breeds are good meat quality, strong disease resistance, low input and output, but they have the disadvantages of more fat, low lean meat rate, and slow growth rate.
For example, the growth cycle of Rongchang pigs is 240 days, while foreign breeds can be slaughtered in only 160 days; the birth rate of Danish and French Landrace and Large White pig breeds can reach more than 14 births, while the current average litter size of Rongchang pigs is only about 11 pieces.
Like Rongchang pigs, the production cost of local pig breeds is higher than imported pigs, but the quality and price are not reflected. The breeding efficiency is lower than the introduced breeds. Pig companies will choose the introduced breeds according to the need for efficiency, which also affects domestic pig breeding. development of.
“Breeding is actually a process of continuous genetic improvement and continuous improvement of pig performance according to industry needs.” Wang Jinyong said that breeding requires continuous R&D investment. Most companies simply introduce breeds to expand and do not focus on breed selection. Keep doing it for a long time.
Speeding up the localization of foreign pig breeds and the industrialization of high-quality local pig breeds can be said to be the top priority of the current breeding work.
From the perspective of modern breeding, it is the new breeding technology to improve the reproductive capacity and meat production capacity of local pigs, so that local pigs can better adapt to the production methods of modern factory farming.
Although the supply rate of the core species of livestock and poultry in my country has exceeded 75%, there is still a gap with developed countries.
According to the "National Livestock and Poultry Genetic Improvement Plan (2021-2035)" recently released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, by 2035, my country will establish a complete commercial breeding system, greatly increase its independent innovation capabilities, and maintain the supply rate of core species derived from More than 95%; characteristic breeds cultivated with local pig genetic resources as materials can fully meet the consumer demand of diversified markets; form a Chinese breed pig brand, and cultivate 3-5 pig breeders with international competitiveness.
Continuously promote the industrialization of local pig breeds
"There is no gap between domestic pig breeding technology and foreign countries. The key is how to stimulate the initiative of pig companies in breeding." Wang Jinyong admitted frankly that the selection of new breeds is a long-term process, and the cruel thing is the accumulation of time and a large amount of data. Recording does not mean that it will succeed.
Even if a new variety is cultivated, it will eventually need to accept the market's choice.
"For example, when cultivating a variety, the feed-to-meat ratio (the amount of feed consumed for gaining one kilogram) is only 0.2 or 0.3 different from foreign countries. It seems that the gap is not big, but for the variety to be promoted to the market on a large scale, it is a gap. "Wang Jinyong said.
As one of the three excellent local pig breeds in my country, how to adapt it to industrial production? The Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry is the leader in this regard.
"Since the 1980s, we have used Rongchang pigs as the basic breeding material, combined crossbreeding and selection, and introduced an appropriate proportion of Danish Landrace pig blood, which became the first domestic low-external blood content (25%). Specialized maternal line for lean pigs-New Rongchang pig I line." Wang Jinyong introduced that compared with the original Rongchang pig, the carcass lean rate of the new Rongchang pig I has increased by 6.3%; the feed conversion rate has increased by 19.3% The daily gain of 20-90 kg body weight increased by 33.5%; the fat thickness decreased by 21.7%.
In 2000, the Rongchang pig matching line (Yurong I) kept the pork quality unchanged, the lean meat ratio reached 63%, the daily weight gain was 800 grams, the feed to meat ratio was 2.6-2.7, and more than 12.5 pigs per breeding .
This laid the foundation for the industrialization of Rongchang pigs. Through promotion, 49 high-quality pig demonstration bases and 67 radiation bases have been established to promote the rapid development of pig breeding in Chongqing and surrounding areas.
It is understood that in addition to the relatively well-developed local breeds such as Rongchang pig, Taihu pig, and Ningxiang pig, there are also many local pig breeds produced on a large scale, such as the Xiangcun black pig in Hunan and the No. 1 native pig in Guangdong. , Jishen black pigs in Jilin, these pig breeds are new breeds bred from local breeds.
In order to continuously improve the meat quality, the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry has continued to innovate in technical means and independently developed the in vivo prediction technology of intramuscular fat.
Wang Jinyong said that in terms of taste, lean meat has a certain amount of fat to have a good flavor.
In the past, the evaluation could only be done after slaughter. Now the live prediction technology of intramuscular fat can be used to evaluate the meat quality without killing pigs, which is not only accurate but also protects breeding pigs.
In order to protect local resources, the Chongqing Academy of Animal Science established a cryopreservation library in 2006 to freeze semen, oocytes, and embryos to avoid the impact of African swine fever and other epidemics that would cause the extinction of local breeds.
At present, the institute is advancing the construction of the western breed depository to better protect the local pig breeds in the western region.
Realizing overtaking in curves in the breeding of professional pig breeds
"Sterile pigs", "SPF pigs" and "humanized antibody pigs", these pigs are not for eating, they are the "babies" of pigs.
Since the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry Sciences developed my country’s only humanized antibody mouse with independent intellectual property rights in February last year, their bigger goal is to breed humanized antibody pigs, which are important animal resources for biosafety prevention and control. It is far more difficult to breed than mice.
At present, Ge Liangpeng, director of the Institute of Bioengineering of Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry Sciences, and his team have taken the lead in establishing gene editing technology for pigs in the world.
When a new outbreak of infectious disease occurs, humanized antibody pigs can be used to produce large amounts of human antibodies in a short period of time (same as the serum of recovered patients).
SPF pigs, also called specific pathogen-free pigs, are standard laboratory animals that must be used in the evaluation and verification of vaccines for pigs.
In 2019, 28 SPF Rongchang pigs produced and bred by Chongqing Academy of Animal Science "flew" to the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences to develop a "white mouse" for the African swine fever vaccine in my country.
Prior to this, only a few units in my country mastered the SPF pig technology, and the source was mainly imported from abroad.
Ge Liangpeng said that the mass production of SPF Rongchang pigs can be realized in a short time because they have mature SPF pig breeding core key technologies-pig aseptic cesarean section technology and pig aseptic feeding technology, which is far more difficult than SPF pigs. .
Sterile pigs refer to experimental pigs without any microorganisms in their bodies. They can be used for children's vaccines, infant milk powder quality evaluation, development of diet products for special patients, and health research for premature infants.
Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry is the only unit in my country that has an aseptic pig breeding platform. Using the existing aseptic pig breeding technology system, the institute has carried out the breeding and industrial application of SPF pigs at the same time.
At the same time, efforts have been made to promote the use of SPF pig serum, pig skin, cells and tissues as high-grade biomedical raw materials.
"Professional pig breed breeding research is a new field in pig breeding, and it is also an area where my country can bend and overtake in pig breeding." Ge Liangpeng introduced, through gene editing and biological purification and other biotechnology, it is oriented on the basis of ordinary pigs. Cultivate professional pig breeds (lines) for biomedical purposes, which can directly produce biomedical products, or provide high-quality production raw materials for the development of biomedical products, and serve as animal models for preclinical evaluation of drugs/medical devices, so that they can be cultivated Incubate related technology-based enterprises to provide technological support for the development of the industry from the low-end to the mid-to-high end.
Liu Zuohua, Dean of the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry, said that as the first national innovation center in the agricultural field approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Pig Technology Innovation Center will use Rongchang pig and other high-quality local pig germplasm resources in China in terms of the innovative utilization of germplasm resources. Cultivate new species that meet China's consumption needs and modern breeding, and breed them into experimental animals that can be used for medical research. By 2025, the center plans to breed 3-5 high-quality, food-saving, and disease-resistant pig breeds, with production performance equivalent to foreign excellent breeds; research and development of antimicrobial peptides and other antibiotic substitutes for feed, and high-tech products for the pig industry such as African swine fever vaccine More than 50.