Alberta may be famous for its beef, but the province is also home to a thriving pork sector. Canada is the third largest global pork exporter, and approx. 20% of that pork is raised here in Alberta. Healthy pigs are foundational to this success, and genomic tools are helping pig breeders maximize pig health and reduce the impact of disease on animal welfare.

As demand for protein grows both here and around the world, maintaining healthy, productive herds is a high priority for the pork industry. Disease resilience, the ability to be minimally affected by disease or to rapidly return to normal after pathogenic infection, has become an area of particular interest for pork producers and breeders. Improving the disease resilience of our nation’s pork could have wide-ranging benefits:

• • Better for pigs: Staying healthy means a better quality of life for animals too. No one enjoys being sick, and the same is true for livestock suffering from illness. Improved disease resilience means pigs get sick less often and infections are less severe, thereby improving animal welfare.
  • Better for pork producers: Caring for sick animals takes money, time and resources, and infectious diseases impact pigs’ ability to grow and produce litters. The two most common diseases affecting commercial pigs – Porcine Circovirus Associated Disease (PCVAD) and Porcine Respiratory and Reproductive Syndrome (PRRS) – cost Canadian pork producers $100 million every year. With healthier pigs, high-quality pork can be produced at lower cost, which benefits producers and consumers.
  • Better for Albertans: The health of people, animals and the environment depend on one another – this is core to the One Health approach. Infectious diseases that affect animals can sometimes mutate and spread to people and this risk increases when farm workers are exposed to infected livestock. On the other hand, the more antibiotics are used to control the spread of disease, the greater the risk that pathogens will develop antimicrobial resistance. Improving the disease resilience of livestock helps ensure a safer, more secure food supply and workforce, while also reducing reliance on antibiotics.

Just as breeders can select for bigger, faster-growing pigs, they can also select for pigs that are better at fighting off illness. However, doing so is often easier said than done. While previous research has identified genes that are important for disease resilience in pigs, selecting pigs on the basis of these genes alone could have underwhelming results. Genes interact with the environment and the rest of the genome in complex ways, and a gene associated with improved disease resilience might have a negative impact on other desirable traits, like body size and growth rate. A holistic approach that considers the whole genome is needed.

To tackle this challenge, a research team led from the University of Alberta partnered with PigGen Canada to accelerate the improvement of disease resilience in pigs. PigGen Canada is a not-for-profit representing Canada’s pig breeding companies, whose mandate is to maximize the potential of genomics for its member organizations and producers. Through the development of genomics-based selection tools, the project aimed to increase the rate of genetic improvement.

The project tested several biological and genomic markers that had already been identified as promising indicators of disease resilience. By presenting pathogens to pigs in a controlled environment, researchers were able to understand which genes contribute most to disease resilience and develop genomic tests to detect key indicators. The focus was to concentrate on the genomic markers that, if selected, would maximize the overall health of the animal. Such findings would help pig breeders develop superior animals from their breeding program.

To mobilize this information, the project contributed to the development of PigDB, a vast database of pig genomic data. Large datasets enable researchers to compare traits and solve health challenges that are simply not possible with individual herd data. With the help of tools like bioinformatics, machine learning and AI, researchers can leverage these datasets to analyze thousands of variables at once.

Pig breeders understand this value, but sharing genomic data from their herds with other companies would normally risk exposing proprietary information. With robust data management and stewardship in place, PigDB allowed companies to pool their samples while keeping their proprietary data protected. All companies contributing data can now compare their samples against a large population dataset with the assurance that only they can see their own samples. This helps individual producers improve efficiencies in their business, and provides valuable insights to the industry as a whole.

“Since its inception, PigGen Canada members have understood the benefits of collaborative research. A great example is our project The application of genomics-based tools to select for pig disease resilience. This project leveraged past work to develop and apply genomic-based tools directly to breeding programs, many of which are already in use by our members. This would not have been possible in such a short time frame without the collaboration and resources of PGC members, the funding from Genome Alberta and excellent work from U of A.”

Tom Rathje, Board Chair, PigGen Canada

This model of collaboration has allowed improvement in pig health industry-wide, and has even drawn the interest of researchers beyond Alberta. Researchers in Europe have already requested permission to use the dataset, believing it will help them identify biomarkers for other disease factors. And as PigDB draws more interest, it grows more valuable. As a living database, users can continue to add samples, enabling researchers to do more powerful analysis and expanding what we can learn from it.

In addition to helping pig breeders boost their herds’ resilience to serious diseases, these datasets are an invaluable tool for addressing emerging threats to the pork industry. Through partnership between Genome Alberta and Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR), a new  initiative aims to provide solutions to One Health challenges including the emerging threat of African Swine Fever (ASF). ASF is a devastating virus that has a mortality rate of 100%. While ASF has not yet been detected in Canada, the virus has spread rapidly through Europe, Asia and Africa and poses a significant risk to the Canadian pork industry. There is currently no vaccine for ASF.

The new research initiative will provide up to $5,000,000 in funding for research projects that utilize genomic-enabled technologies for solutions to One Health challenges and benefit to Alberta producers. The initiative includes a number of areas including the challenge of understanding of the population genetics and disease resilience of invasive wild pigs – a likely disease vector if ASF were to enter North America.

As Albertan pork producers continue to raise the bar for the quality of their product and the welfare of their animals, genomics have become a critical tool in the fight against disease.

See our Project Portfolio to learn more about projects Genome Alberta has funded in the Agriculture sector.