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The Purdue hog cooling pad has previously been demonstrated to mitigate heat stress in lactating sows by conductively transferring heat from a sow to cool water running through an integral heat exchanger. Coolant effectiveness, which describes how much heat is removed per volume of water flushed through the cooling pad, is used to compare the operation under varying conditions. Past studies have indicated that the intermittent flow of cooling water achieves a greater coolant effectiveness than continuous flow operational schemes. An electronic control system was implemented with the current cooling pad design to allow for the automated control of a solenoid valve to create the intermittent flow conditions. All testing was performed using 18 ± 1 °C inlet water. Potential control schemes were categorized into two groups, temporal and temperature threshold. The temporal schemes opened the solenoid for 30 s, enough time to flush the entire contents of the cooling coils, before closing for 3, 6, or 9 min. The temperature threshold control schemes utilized feedback from thermal probes embedded beneath the surface of the cooling pad to open the solenoid for 30 s, when a maximum surface temperature was detected. Trigger temperatures of 28.0, 29.5, or 31.0 °C were used. The temperature threshold control schemes achieved greater heat transfer rates (348, 383, 268 W) compared to the temporal control schemes (324, 128, 84 W). The cooling effectiveness for all control schemes ranged from 46.6 to 64.7 kJ/L. The tested intermittent flow control schemes in this study achieved greater cooling effectiveness than continuous flow systems from previous studies (time: 51 kJ/L; temperature: 61 kJ/L; steady: 5.8 kJ/L), although the temporal control schemes exhibited lower heat transfer rates (time: 180 W; temperature: 330 W; steady: 305 W). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Advances in SNP arrays and reference genome assemblies have significantly transformed cattle genomics, particularly for Bos taurus indicus (Zebu cattle). Many commercial SNP arrays were originally designed for Bos taurus taurus, leading to ascertainment bias and the exclusion of crucial SNPs specific to Zebu populations. This review assesses progress in SNP array and reference genome development, with a focus on efforts tailored to Zebu populations and their impact on genomic selection and breeding efficiency. Methods: We reviewed the relevant literature on the development of SNP arrays, reference genome assemblies, and SNP genotyping techniques used for Zebu cattle. Emphasis was placed on SNP arrays specifically designed for Zebu breeds, evaluating their contributions to genomic evaluations and identifying limitations in prediction accuracy. Results: Recent advancements, such as GeneSeek's low- and high-density SNP panels, have aimed to reduce ascertainment bias and include key SNPs for Zebu populations by providing breed-specific panels. These panels have been instrumental in identifying genomic regions associated with economically important traits in Nellore cattle. Studies show that tailored SNP arrays and breed-specific reference genomes can enhance genetic diversity assessment and improve genomic predictions, supporting more effective breeding programs for Zebu cattle. Conclusions: Improved SNP arrays and breed-specific reference genomes are crucial for accurate genomic selection in Zebu cattle. Future efforts should prioritize expanding de novo genome assemblies, reducing ascertainment bias, and developing cost-effective genotyping solutions tailored to Zebu populations. Targeted genomic tools will ultimately enable more efficient breeding practices and enhance genomic selection for economically important traits in B. t. indicus cattle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change poses a growing threat to the livestock industry, impacting animal productivity, animal welfare, and farm management practices. Thus, enhancing livestock climatic resilience (CR) is becoming a key priority in various breeding programs. CR can be defined as the ability of an animal to be minimally affected or rapidly return to euthermia under thermally stressful conditions. The primary study objectives were to perform genome-wide association studies for 12 CR indicators derived from variability in longitudinal vaginal temperature in lactating sows under heat stress conditions. A total of 31 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on nine chromosomes were considered as significantly associated with nine CR indicators based on different thresholds. Among them, only two SNPs were simultaneously identified for different CR indicators, SSC6:16,449,770 bp and SSC7:39,254,889 bp. These results highlighted the polygenic nature of CR indicators with small effects distributed across different chromosomes. Furthermore, we identified 434 positional genes associated with CR. Key candidate genes include SLC3A2 , STX5 , POLR2G , and GANAB , which were previously related to heat stress responses, protein folding, and cholesterol metabolism. Furthermore, the enriched KEGG pathways and Gene Ontology (GO) terms associated with these candidate genes are linked to stress responses, immune and inflammatory responses, neural system, and DNA damage and repair. The most enriched quantitative trait loci are related to "Meat and Carcass", followed by "Production", "Reproduction", "Health", and "Exterior (conformation and appearance)" traits. Multiple genomic regions were identified associated with different CR indicators, which reveals that CR is a highly polygenic trait with small effect sizes distributed across the genome. Many heat tolerance or HS related genes in our study, such as HSP90AB1 , DMGDH , and HOMER1 , have been identified. The complexity of CR encompasses a range of adaptive responses, from behavioral to cellular. These results highlight the possibility of selecting more heat-tolerant individuals based on the identified SNP for CR indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights A stainless steel tubing variant of the Purdue hog cooling pad has been designed with identical dimensions as the original copper-tubed design. Thermal capacity testing demonstrated a longer time constant for the pad with stainless steel tubing than the pad with copper tubing. The stainless steel tubing pad compared to the copper unit had a diminished heat transfer rate, Biot number, and coolant use effectiveness based upon laboratory bench testing for heat transfer properties. The modern commercial pork industry is facing a dilemma with the thermal management of its farrowing facilities. The choice between sow comfort and piglet health plays a huge role in strategic decisions due to the different desirable temperature ranges for sows and piglets, resulting in thermal stress within the sows. Purdue University researchers have devised a simple conductive floor cooling unit that utilizes copper tubing to transport heat from the sow into coolant circulating through the device. Pad longevity issues created by the introduction of copper into the harsh environments found within swine facilities are major concerns. Potentially, this might be alleviated by utilizing stainless steel tubing as an alternative to copper. The thermal profile of these new stainless steel cooling pad systems, in comparison to their original copper tubing variant, will be presented in this paper. Tests were conducted to determine the effectiveness of the pad at transferring its own internal heat into the coolant and the ability of the pad to remove heat from a sow. The stainless steel variant had slightly more thermal capacity, but it was much less efficient at transferring heat from a simulated animal than its copper counterpart. Further testing would be needed to determine if the longevity provided by the stainless steel was worth the apparent decrease in cooling efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genomic breeding programs have been paramount in improving the rates of genetic progress of productive efficiency traits in livestock. Such improvement has been accompanied by the intensification of production systems, use of a wider range of precision technologies in routine management practices, and high-throughput phenotyping. Simultaneously, a greater public awareness of animal welfare has influenced livestock producers to place more emphasis on welfare relative to production traits. Therefore, management practices and breeding technologies in livestock have been developed in recent years to enhance animal welfare. In particular, genomic selection can be used to improve livestock social behavior, resilience to disease and other stress factors, and ease habituation to production system changes. The main requirements for including novel behavioral and welfare traits in genomic breeding schemes are: (1) to identify traits that represent the biological mechanisms of the industry breeding goals; (2) the availability of individual phenotypic records measured on a large number of animals (ideally with genomic information); (3) the derived traits are heritable, biologically meaningful, repeatable, and (ideally) not highly correlated with other traits already included in the selection indexes; and (4) genomic information is available for a large number of individuals (or genetically close individuals) with phenotypic records. In this review, we (1) describe a potential route for development of novel welfare indicator traits (using ideal phenotypes) for both genetic and genomic selection schemes; (2) summarize key indicator variables of livestock behavior and welfare, including a detailed assessment of thermal stress in livestock; (3) describe the primary statistical and bioinformatic methods available for large-scale data analyses of animal welfare; and (4) identify major advancements, challenges, and opportunities to generate high-throughput and large-scale datasets to enable genetic and genomic selection for improved welfare in livestock. A wide variety of novel welfare indicator traits can be derived from information captured by modern technology such as sensors, automatic feeding systems, milking robots, activity monitors, video cameras, and indirect biomarkers at the cellular and physiological levels. The development of novel traits coupled with genomic selection schemes for improved welfare in livestock can be feasible and optimized based on recently developed (or developing) technologies. Efficient implementation of genetic and genomic selection for improved animal welfare also requires the integration of a multitude of scientific fields such as cell and molecular biology, neuroscience, immunology, stress physiology, computer science, engineering, quantitative genomics, and bioinformatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic improvement of livestock productivity has resulted in greater production of metabolic heat and potentially greater susceptibility to heat stress. Various studies have demonstrated that there is genetic variability for heat tolerance and genetic selection for more heat tolerant individuals is possible. The rate of genetic progress tends to be greater when genomic information is incorporated into the analyses as more accurate breeding values can be obtained for young individuals. Therefore, this study aimed (1) to evaluate the predictive ability of genomic breeding values for heat tolerance based on routinely recorded traits, and (2) to investigate the genetic background of heat tolerance based on single‐step genome‐wide association studies for economically important traits related to body composition, growth and reproduction in Large White pigs. Pedigree information was available for 265,943 animals and genotypes for 8686 animals. The studied traits included ultrasound backfat thickness (BFT), ultrasound muscle depth (MDP), piglet weaning weight (WW), off‐test weight (OTW), interval between farrowing (IBF), total number of piglets born (TNB), number of piglets born alive (NBA), number of piglets born dead (NBD), number of piglets weaned (WN) and weaning‐to‐estrus interval (IWE). The number of phenotypic records ranged from 6059 (WN) to 172,984 (TNB). Single‐step genomic reaction norm predictions were used to calculate the genomic estimated breeding values for each individual. Predictions of breeding values for the validation population individuals were compared between datasets containing phenotypic records measured in the whole range of temperatures (WR) and datasets containing only phenotypic records measured when the weather station temperature was above 10°C (10C) or 15°C (15C), to evaluate the usefulness of these datasets that may better reflect the within‐barn temperature. The use of homogeneous or heterogeneous residual variance was found to be trait‐dependent, where homogeneous variance presented the best fit for MDP, BFT, OTW, TNB, NBA, WN and IBF, while the other traits (WW and IWE) had better fit with heterogeneous variance. The average prediction accuracy, dispersion and bias values considering all traits for WR were 0.36 ± 0.05, −0.07 ± 0.13 and 0.76 ± 0.10, respectively; for 10C were 0.39 ± 0.02, −0.05 ± 0.07 and 0.81 ± 0.05, respectively; and for 15C were 0.32 ± 0.05, −0.05 ± 0.11 and 0.84 ± 0.10, respectively. Based on the studied traits, using phenotypic records collected when the outside temperature (from public weather stations) was above 10°C provided better predictions for most of the traits. Forty‐three and 62 candidate genomic regions were associated with the intercept (overall performance level) and slope term (specific biological mechanisms related to environmental sensitivity), respectively. Our results contribute to improve genomic predictions using existing datasets and better understand the genetic background of heat tolerance in pigs. Furthermore, the genomic regions and candidate genes identified will contribute to future genomic studies and breeding applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the swine industry continues to explore pork quality traits alongside growth, feed efficiency and carcass leanness traits, it becomes imperative to understand their underlying genetic relationships. Due to this increase in the number of desirable traits, animal breeders must also consider methods to efficiently perform direct genetic changes for each trait and evaluate alternative selection indexes with different sets of phenotypic measurements. Principal component analysis (PCA) and genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) can be combined to understand the genetic architecture and biological mechanisms by defining biological types (biotypes) that relate these valuable traits. Therefore, the main objectives of this study were to: (1) estimate genomic‐based genetic parameters; (2) define animal biotypes utilizing PCA; and (3) utilize GWAS to link the biotypes to candidate genes and quantitative trait loci (QTL). The phenotypic dataset included 2583 phenotypic records from female Duroc pigs from a terminal sire line. The pedigree file contained 193,764 animals and the genotype file included 21,309 animals with 35,651 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Eight principal components (PCs), accounting for a total of 99.7% of the population variation, were defined for three growth, eight conventional carcass, 10 pork quality and 18 novel carcass traits. The eight biotypes defined from the PCs were found to be related to growth rate, maturity, meat quality and body structure, which were then related to candidate genes. Of the 175 candidate genes found, six of them [LDHA (SSC1), PIK3C3 (SSC6), PRKAG3 (SSC15), VRTN (SSC7), DLST (SSC7) and PAPPA (SSC1)] related to four PCs were found to be associated with previously defined QTL, linking the biotypes with biological processes involved with muscle growth, fat deposition, glycogen levels and skeletal development. Further functional analyses helped to make connections between biotypes, relating them through common KEGG pathways and gene ontology (GO) terms. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the genetic relationships between growth, carcass and meat quality traits in Duroc pigs, enabling breeders to better understand the biological mechanisms underlying the phenotypic expression of these traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lactating sows and their litters are particularly vulnerable to heat stress (HS). HS decreases fertility, feed intake, milk production, and litter growth of sows. Approaches are needed to mitigate the negative effects of HS on animal welfare and oxidative damage to tissues. The objective of this study was to measure the efficacy of conductive heat removal using electronic cooling pads (ECP) and feeding Moringa oleifera (4% of the diet, M), a feedstuff high in antioxidants, to sows from late gestation to weaning on their welfare and production performance. A study was conducted using a 2 × 2 factorial design of treatments, with mixed parity Yorkshire × Landrace sows (n  = 48). The sows were exposed to moderate HS conditions from gestation day 110 to day 21 of lactation. To achieve moderate HS, the farrowing room temperature was increased incrementally daily from 25 °C to 32 °C between 0800 and 1100 hours and decreased from 32 °C to 26 °C between 1700 and 2000 hours. Sows were limit fed during gestation (1.36 kg 2X/d) and fed ad libitum post farrowing. Treatments included HS + control corn–soybean meal (CS)-based diet (HS + CS), HS + M, ECP + CS, ECP + M (n  = 12/treatment). Sow respiration rate (RR) and rectal temperature (RT) were measured four times daily (0600, 1300, 1600, and 1900 hours). The use of ECP decreased lactating sow RR (HS = 66.6 bpm, ECP = 28.3 bpm, P <  0.0001), RT (HS = 39.2 °C, ECP = 38.8 °C, P =  0.003), and lactation body weight (BW) loss (HS = −21.67 kg, ECP = −5.1 kg P =  0.002). ECP by time-of-day interactions (P <  0.01) existed for RR and RT, with ECP having a greater impact from 1300 to 1900 hours, than at 0600 hours. ECP increased the intake of lactation feed (P =  0.02). An ECP by diet interaction (P =  0.0004) indicated that ECP increased the intake of lactation feed for the sows fed the CS diet (6.48 vs. 4.42 kg/d, P =  0.0004), but did not affect the feed intake of sows fed the M diet. The treatment did not affect litter weaning weight (P =  0.14). Moringa increased percent fat in milk (M = 12.28%, CS = 11.06%, P =  0.05). The reduction in sow RR and RT, and increase in feed intake with lower loss of BW indicate that ECP improved sow well-being in the HS environment. Neither ECP nor M affected litter growth, despite M increasing fat content of milk and ECP–CS increasing feed intake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pig production, pigs often show more aggressive behavior after mixing, which adversely affects animal welfare and growth performance. The Jumonji and structural domain-rich AT interaction domain 2 (JARID2) gene plays an important role in neurodevelopment in mice and various psychiatric disorders in humans. The JARID2 gene may impact the aggressive behavior of pigs. By observing the behavior of 500 weaned pigs during the first 72 h after mixing, the ear tissue samples of the 12 most aggressive and 12 least aggressive pigs were selected for DNA resequencing based on the intensity of their aggressive behavior. Large group correlation analysis indicated that the rs3262221458 site located in the 3′-UTR region of the porcine JARID2 gene has a strong relationship with the aggressive behavior of weaned pigs. Pigs with the mutant TT genotype of rs3262221458 have more aggressive behavior than those pigs with the GG and GT genotypes. The dual luciferase assay indicated that the luciferase activity of the plasmids containing the G allele of rs326221458 was significantly less than that of plasmids containing the T allele of rs326221458 and control groups. The binding ability of miR-9828-3p to sequences containing the T allele was less than that of sequences containing the G allele. The overexpression of miR-9828-3p in porcine neuroglial cells (PNGCs) and PK15 cells significantly decreased the mRNA and protein levels of the JARID2 gene. In addition, miR-9828-3p inhibited the proliferation of PNGCs. After inhibiting miR-9828-3p, the mRNA and protein expression levels of JARID2 increased, and the proliferation of PNGCs showed an opposite trend to the cells that forced the expression of miR-9828-3p. In addition, interference with the JARID2 gene by siRNA can effectively inhibit the proliferation of PNGCs. In summary, we found that the rs326221458 locus regulates the expression of the JARID2 gene by affecting the binding of miR-9828-3p and the JARID2 gene, thereby affecting the aggressive behavior of weaned pigs after mixing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]