A HIGH-QUALITY PIG KEPT FOR BREEDING HAS TO BE FREE OF CHROMOSOMAL-ABNORMALITIES

Chromosomal abnormalities, especially reciprocal translocations, can d ecrease the prolificacy of sows, and lead to important economic losses in pig farming. For several years, the detection of such abnormalitie s was based on the analysis of the technical results of the herds, cen tralized at the INRA national computing centre using the national prog ram for sow herd management. Several ways to improve the classical det ection procedure were proposed. The use of the state of the art labora tory techniques (banding techniques), to ensure the quality of the lab oratory diagnosis, was also suggested.