Identifying fertility markers in boars

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Boars with poor fertility cause financial losses to swine genetic companies such as Topigs Norsvin Canada Inc. and the larger Canadian swine industry, reduce the efficiency of food production, and slow the rate of genetic improvement. Currently there is no accurate test for a boar's fertility, and Topigs Norsvin Canada must provide semen to a number of customers, and collect pregnancy rates and number of pigs per litter from at least 20 inseminations from several producers before they can determine if the boar himself is subfertile. Successful identification of sub or non-fertile boars would enable Topigs Norsvin Canada Inc. to reduce costly reproductive losses and improve the overall productivity and profitability of the Canadian swine industry. The objective of this project is to identify potential markers of boar fertility to allow pre-screening of individual boars before selection into a breeding program. This will be achieved by determining the uniquely different amounts and types of a newly identified fertility-predicting protein, ATPase, in boars already proven to be of high and low fertility. Numerous Skype and in-person consultations between Topigs officials and our group have designed this exciting project to assess applicability of this technology in the Canadian industry. Differences between high and low fertility boars will be determined and these data will provide the foundation for the development of a simple functional assay to enable Topigs Norsvin Canada Inc. to proactively screen all boars within their system, and identify and remove low fertility boars from the breeding population.