A large-scale comparison of meat quality and intramuscular fatty acid composition among three Chinese indigenous pig breeds

Derived from the long historical natural and artificial selection, Chinese indigenous pigs have formed their own special meat characteristics. We herein systematically evaluated 14 meat characteristics and 15 fatty acid composition traits on three Chinese local pig breeds. The experimental pigs were produced by crossing design covering all sire genealogy and most of dam genealogy in each of the three breeds' seed conservation farms. All animals were reared in the same standardized housing and feeding conditions. A Comparison study showed that most of the investigated meat quality traits present significant differences among Bamaxiang, Erhualian and Laiwu breeds. While Erhualian pigs outperformed pH traits, the Laiwu pigs showed extremely high intramuscular fat content, better meat color and lower drip loss (P < .05). The highest contents of total saturated fatty acids and total polyunsaturated fatty acids were found in Laiwu and Erhualian, respectively. These results will benefit the future breeding utilization of these genetic resources for worldwide swine meat quality improvement.