Reproduction traits such as litter size, the number of animals born from the same parents at the same time, has very low accuracy when selecting breeders by their parents’ breeding value in case that the breeders are not mature enough to have their own reproduction records.

Until now, pig breeders in South Korea have selected candidate pigs used for the next generation based on the breeding value estimated by the parents' family tree, but the efficiency of this method was as low as 8%.

To solve this, Chonbuk National University’s Animal Molecular Genetics and Breeding Center (AMGBC) recently succeeded in the development and field application of a new genomic selection technique, for the first time in South Korea.

Through the analysis of genomic information of livestock and insects, the research institute has been engaged in mass genome discovery, variety development, and improvement of disease resistance and quality of livestock.

The new technology is expected to offer the breeding value earlier and three times more accurately (22%), thus leading to the maximization and acceleration of breed improvement with a 16.6 billion-won profit.

In collaboration with three farms and a related enterprise, the institute has collected and analyzed genomic information of more than 10,000 swine since 2015, and obtained a reference group of 9,538 swine.

In the next three years, another 1.5 billion won will be invested to expand genetic selection to be applied at the farm level on the basis of genetic linkage between farms based on the existing research results. It is expected that it will increase the number of reference groups to improve the accuracy of the selection.