Abstract:

Breeding against boar taint becomes more important since surgical castration of young piglets was banned by law in Germany from 2021. Main compounds responsible for boar taint are androstenone and skatole. Previous studies underline the polygenetic background of at least androstenone in the genome and pointed out breed-specific differences. Genotype data from previous genome wide association studies were used to perform meta-analyses in order to identify overlapping gene regions between lines, associated with androstenone and/or skatole. Data from three different origins was used: two maternal purebred breeds (Landrace and Large White) and a Piétrain-sired commercial endproduct population (Piétrain×F1/F2 sow). Results of the meta-analyses showed eleven overlapping markers for skatole in all three populations in a previously identified region on Sus scrofa chromosome (SSC) 14 around 141 Mega base pairs (Mb) which underlines the importance of this region for skatole for further analyses.