Abstract
Microsatellite diversity in European and Chinese pigs was assessed using a pooled sampling method on 52 European and 46 Chinese pig populations. A Neighbor Joining analysis on genetic distances revealed that European breeds were grouped together and showed little evidence for geographic structure, although a southern European and English group could tentatively be assigned. Populations from international breeds formed breed specific clusters. The Chinese breeds formed a second major group, with the Sino-European synthetic Tia Meslan in-between the two large clusters. Within Chinese breeds, in contrast to the European pigs, a large degree of geographic structure was noted, in line with previous classification schemes for Chinese pigs that were based on morphology and geography. The Northern Chinese breeds were most similar to the European breeds. Although some overlap exists, Chinese breeds showed a higher average degree of heterozygosity and genetic distance compared to European ones. Between breed diversity was even more pronounced and was the highest in the Central Chinese pigs, reflecting the geographically central position in China. Comparing correlations between genetic distance and heterozygosity revealed that China and Europe represent different domestication or breed formation processes. A likely cause is a more diverse wild boar population in Asia, but various other possible contributing factors are discussed.
Highlights
Domestication of the pig occurred independently on several occasions [15, 25], and some gene flow with the wild boar may have remained until pigs were kept in sties [48]
Names of European breeds are according to Porter [34], Chinese breeds mainly according to Zhang [49], Zhang et al [50], and Fang et al [12]
This contrast in patterns of distances suggests that overall patterns of diversity in pig breeds are different between Europe and China. We further investigated this by plotting gene diversity H against the Mean Genetic Distance (MGD) according to [20]
Summary
Domestication of the pig occurred independently on several occasions [15, 25], and some gene flow with the wild boar may have remained until pigs were kept in sties [48]. There are two major areas of pig breeding, Europe and China, and each seems to represent an independent domestication event In both areas pig breeding has been applied for at least 7-8000 years [8] resulting in many local breeds and specialized breeds with a wider distribution, which were selected for the production of particular meat types such as pork or bacon. The result is that China has more pig breeds than any other country in the world by far; the World Watch List for Domestic Animal Diversity [41] lists 118 distinct breeds Most of these breeds are still local, the advent of modern pig breeding techniques, involving European or new Chinese × European synthetic breeds results in rapid marginalization of many of these traditional breeds ([33, 41]; 10 listed as endangered, but 30 more show no population data). The remaining areas represent the Northern Chinese (NC) pigs, and the Plateau (Plat) type from the Tibetan area, which is the home of a few breeds adapted to marginal feeding and high altitude
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