Germany

A group led by Associate Professor Chris Moran of the Faculty of Veterinary Science has been collaborating with a number of European laboratories in a collaborative project initiated by Professor Herman Geldermann of the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany. The project has included collaborators from Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Italy and Australia.

The outcomes of the project to map functionally important genes in pigs, using a resource created by crossing Belgian Pietrain, Chinese Meishan and European Wild Boar, will soon be appearing as a complete issue of Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics (20 papers, one for each chromosome and an overview paper) and include the recognition or confirmation of the existence of genes on many chromosomes affecting growth, meat quality, stress response and numerous other commercially important traits in pigs.

The work has been financially supported by the PiGMaP-project of the EC-BRIDGE program, the INCO-Copernicus program of the EC, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, and the Pig Research and Development Corporation of Australia.