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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Breeding and Genetics
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2025.1553271
This article is part of the Research Topic Characterization of Local Farm Animal Genetic Diversity for Better Resource Use and Climate Change Adaptation View all articles
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African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious viral disease that affects domestic and wild pigs and leads to a high mortality rate and economic losses. It can damage local pig breeds, as these are generally more susceptible to infection due to more frequent contact with wild boar. Considering the devastating effects of ASF on local pig populations, the aim of the study was to assess genetic diversity parameters in local Black Slavonian pig after the recent outbreak of ASF in Eastern Croatia using pedigree information. The whole pedigree contained 13 306 animals. The reference population was set starting on the year 2018 and contained 1658 individuals. Basic population parameters: average inbreeding coefficient, average relatedness and effective population size were estimated in two scenarios. The first scenario assumed that there was no culling due to ASF and parameters were estimated for all available animals. In the second scenario, we accounted for animals that were culled due to ASF. Adopted optimal contribution selection procedure was used with the aim of minimising relationship between animals in population. Mating plans were created in two scenarios: in the first scenario average relatedness and future inbreeding were calculated for reference population assuming there was no culling due to ASF while in the second scenario parameters were calculated excluding mating candidates culled due to ASF epidemic. The average inbreeding coefficient was 5.21% in the scenario without culling animals due to ASF and 4.27% with culled animals due to ASF, respectively. Effective population size in both scenarios was 47.10 and 42.94, respectively, indicating impaired genetic diversity of the population. Genetic diversity parameters were slightly more favorable in the ASF scenario probably due to the culling of highly related animals. Even though the overall genetic diversity parameters in the population remained stable, the reduced number of mating candidates resulted in a higher likelihood of pairing related individuals which might result with increased inbreeding rate. Future studies focusing on the use of molecular information could be helpful for determining relatedness between mating candidates, as genealogical information based on shallow pedigrees may lead to over-or underestimation of population parameters.
Keywords: pigs, African Swine Fever, genetic diversity, conservation, Inbreeding
Received: 30 Dec 2024; Accepted: 24 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Škorput, Stupnišek, Špehar, Karolyi, Kaić and Luković. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ana Kaić, Division of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
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