Additive effects of 19 porcine SNPs on growth rate, meat content and selection index

A total of 306 boars (108 Large White and 198 Landrace) were genotyped for 52 candidate SNPs to determine which of the polymorphisms influence growth rate, meat content and selection index. The effects of SNPs were estimated by a mixed linear model including a random additive polygenic animal effect, fixed effects of SNPs including additive, and pairwise additive-by-additive epistases, year*season of birth, breed and RYR1 genotype. In order to estimate all possible pairwise SNP combinations without overparameterising the model a stochastic approach was adopted. A total of 1 350 replications of the model were generated, each containing five randomly selected SNPs. The final estimates of the fixed effects of the model equaled an average out of the replications. The hypothesis of a nonzero effect of SNP was tested by the Wald test. Among 4 257 estimates calculated, many significant (P<0.01), but mostly minor effects (below 1 phenotypic standard deviation) were recorded. The selected SNPs will be further investigated to determine which may be used in MAS.