Genome-Wide Association Study for Meat Quality Traits in a Multi-Breed Pig Population

This study aimed at identifying genomic regions that affect nine pork quality traits in purebred and crossbred fatteners. A total of 259 fatteners represented by six purebreds/crosses were genotyped for 45556 SNP markers by Illumina Porcine SNP60 BeadChip. The following traits were recorded: glycogen potential (GP), glycogen content (GC), lactate content (LC), pH₃₅, pH₂₄, pH₄₈, drip loss after 48 hours (DL₄₈), colour lightness (L_*) and lean meat content (LMC). Multi-Locus Mixed Model methodology was applied to find associations between SNP markers and recorded traits. Several SNPs were found to be significantly associated with some pork quality traits: four SNPs (located on SSC7, SSC10 and SSC14) with GP, three SNPs (SSC10, SSC14) with GC, one SNP (SSC15) with DL₄₈ and one SNP with pH_48. Genetic variation explained by significant SNPs ranged from 7.6% to 9.1%. Moreover, some genes (e.g. CAPN10, ALDH5A1, PASK, SNITA1 and MYH7B) located in the close vicinity to significant markers are proposed to be candidate genes explaining the genetic background of the traits studied.