Swine Breed Resource and Genetic Improvement in China

China is rich in swine breed resource, called as a valuable gene bank. Among of them, Taihu pig is well known to the world because its average litter size is 15.2. 48 local swine breeds was named in Chinese swine breed annals which was edited based on large-scale investigation of swine breed resource organized by Agricultural Ministry from 1959 to 1983. As to the swine genetic improvement, in the period of 1950's to 1970% Yorkshire, Berkshire and large white of Soviet Union were imported, and played certain role in the breeding of native dual-purpose breed, some new dual-purpose breeds were fostered such as Shanghai white, Harbin white, Beijing black.
In 1980's, Dennish Landrace, American Duroc and English Large white were imported. They
played a very important role in the development of lean meat type swine in China. Some lean
meat type swine fostered out in succession, such as Sanjiang white, Hubei white, Zhejiang white,
it laid the foundation of developing lean type pig production. In 1996, 585 different level and
class piggeries were founded in the whole country., the number of survivor reached up to 62
thousand, 78 swine breeds were raised, including 10 imported breeds, 20 fostered breeds and 52
local breeds and 618 thousand efficient swine were emended throughout country each year. For
more, Breeding Swine Quality Supervising and Testing Center of the Agricultural Ministry,
Breeding Swine Testing Center of Wuhan, P.R.C, Swine Breeding Center of Beijing, Breeding
Swine Testing Station of Hanzhou and Guanzhou were established, swine genetic improvement
was carried out effectively.

Source: http://www. paper.edu.cn