Developments in quantitative genetics methodology as applied to national genetic improvement programs for swine

For a long time,purebred pigs were evalua-ted in a nucleus for several growth,meat qualityand reproduction traits including growth,backfatand number of piglets alive[1].The evaluationwas using BLUP with all traits treated as linearand also assuming a normal distribution.Ani-mals down the pyramid were not evaluated;itwas assumed that most if not all of the gains ofselection at the nucleus level transferred to thecommercial level.The selection based on the e-valuations seemed to be successful as all thetraits...