Swine gene banking: a quality control perspective on collection, and analysis of samples for a national repository

The National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP) is developing a national repository for germplasm (semen, oocytes, embryos, blood, DNA, tissue) for all agricultural species in the US. Currently, the swine collection consists of 127,479 samples from 886 boars representing 20 major, minor and composite populations. Cryopreservation per se is not an impediment to program success. Rather, the greatest difficulties encountered are in determining the quality of the samples pre- and post-thaw. Robust, broadly applicable, and cost effective quality control methodologies need to be developed and implemented. This overview of the NAGP will discuss the approaches used for cryopreserving boar semen samples, overcoming the challenges of assessing sample quality, and moving toward a quality control strategy.