Abstract
Pigs are vital to the economy and critical in meeting the ever increasing demand for livestock and livestock products in most parts of the world. Pig is one of the oldest domesticated animals, though their ancestory is still shrouded in controversy due to lack of sufficient archaeological and genetic information. However, most of the breeds are thought to have descended from the Eurasian Wild Boar (Sus scrofa). This chapter will therefore look at the African pig under the following headings: Introduction, origin of pigs – genetic and historical/archaeological evidences, pig breeds in Africa, economic importance of pig production in Africa, marketing of pigs in Africa, herd health management of pigs in Africa, and challenges affecting pig production in Africa.
Highlights
1.1 Origin of pigs: genetic and historical/archaeological evidences of African domestic pigsPig is one of the oldest domesticated animals and majority of the breeds are known to have descended from the Eurasian Wild Boar (Sus scrofa)
Archaeological evidence from the Middle East indicates that pigs were domesticated as early as 9000 years ago when most livestock were utilized by nomadic peoples, and swine are more indicative of a settled farming community [1]
It is not yet established whether modern domestic pigs which displays significant morphological differences compared with their wild ancestor have a single or multiple origin since Darwin [3] identified two primary grouping of the domestic pigs belonging to the European (Sus scrofa) and the Asian (Sus indicus) groups, respectively
Summary
Pig is one of the oldest domesticated animals and majority of the breeds are known to have descended from the Eurasian Wild Boar (Sus scrofa). In an attempt to provide the missing links to our knowledge, Ramirez and his colleagues [10] carried out the first genetic survey of a number of pig breeds distributed in Western (Nigeria and Benin) and Eastern (Kenya and Zimbabwe) sub-Saharan Africa but did not find any close relationship between the Near Eastern wild boars and African pigs similar to the findings of the study on Near Eastern and European S. scrofa populations [11, 12]. This has led to the disappearance of pigs from a wide swathe of Africa in historic times [6]
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