A NEW MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF THE BREEDING INDEX: FOCUSING ON THE SELECTION OF HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE BOARS AND SOWSFOR THE FATTENING AND MEAT QUALITIES OF THEIR OFFSPRING

The aim of the work was to investigate the fattening and meat qualities of young pigs of the Large White breed of Hungarian origin, and to determine the criteria for selecting boars and sows of the “improvers” category based on absolute quantitative characteristics and a new mathematical model of the selection index Kh3. It was established that young pigs of the Large hite breed of Hungarian origin are characterized by sufficiently high indicators of fattening and meat qualities, and in terms of the age of reaching a live weight of 100 kg, the thickness of the fat at the level of 6–7 thoracic vertebrae and the length of the chilled carcass exceed the minimum requirements for the «elite» class by 6.31, 31.0 and 3.82%, respectively. A significant difference between animals of the II and I experimental groups was established in terms of average daily gain in live weight (41.0 g; td = 4.03), age at reaching a live weight of 100 kg (6.2 days; td = 4.59), fat thickness at the level of 6–7 thoracic vertebrae (2.4 mm; td = 3.03), length of the chilled carcass (0.9 cm; td = 2.19), the length of the bacon half of the chilled half-carcass (2.5 cm; td = 2.71), the largest (front) width of the bacon half of the carcass (2.8 cm; td = 2.85), and the smallest (rear) width of the bacon half of the carcass (1.5 cm; td = 2.11). The number of highly reliable (P < 0.001) pairwise correlation coefficients between the index Kh3, as well as absolute indicators characterizing the fattening and meat qualities of young pigs of the Large White breed is 85.71%. This indicates the effectiveness of using the new mathematical model Kh3 in breeding work with pig populations of controlled populations. The category of “improvers” includes sows and breeding boars, offspring whose fattening and meat qualities correspond to the “elite” class, and the Kh3 index varies from –2.590 to –0.018 points.