China breeds leaner, meatier pig to bring home the bacon in food security drive
- A new breed of pig, the product of 14 years of trials, has received approval from China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for commercial use
- Domestically developed variety yields more meat, grows faster and has higher disease resistance, conferring several advantages over Western counterparts
Chinese researchers have successfully bred a pig that can provide a large yield of lean protein for its meat-hungry population – a development official media has trumpeted as a boon to the country’s pursuit of greater self-reliance in agriculture and a potential replacement for Western imports.
Dubbed a “home-made chip” for hog breeding – drawing a direct parallel with the country's quest for advancement in semiconductors and other computing components – the new Lansi breed could perform better on the market than popular pig varieties from Europe and the United States, the Science and Technology Daily reported last week.
The new breed grows faster, produces more lean meat and shows stronger resistance to disease compared to mainstream imports, geneticists from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences were quoted as saying.
The Lansi pig is the product of 14 years of trials using over 2,000 swine from mainstream breeds originating in the United States and the United Kingdom. It recently received approval from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for commercial use.
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Over that long period of testing and analysis, the researchers developed software and databases that will help accelerate the breeding process in the future, said team lead Li Kui.