Isabel Rodriguez, a master's student at Iowa State University specializing in animal reproductive physiology, has provided an overview of a 2023 peer-reviewed research paper focusing on enhancing swine reproduction efficiency by investigating the sperm of male pigs. With the supervision of Stacie Matchan, Extension Program Specialist at the Iowa Pork Industry Center, and Dr. Nicholas Gabler, Professor of Swine Nutrition at Iowa State University, Rodriguez has summarized the cutting-edge techniques for optimizing pig breeding practices.
Major Finding
Artificial insemination is a reproductive technology used in animal breeding and human medicine. It involves the introduction of sperm into a female’s reproductive tract by methods other than natural mating. In the US, a large majority of female pigs (mature gilts and sows) are bred using a semen that has been collected from boars (males) and meets quality standards of over 80% good movement (motility) and size/shape (morphology). The advantage of this management practice includes the ability to use superior genetics from boars not physically present on the farm, reducing the risk of disease transmission, and improving herd management efficiency.
This article gives an insight on metrics that can be used to analyze boar semen to better predict the fertility of a boar—an uncastrated male pig. While sperm motility and morphology are good determinants of fertility, they do not tell the whole fertilization potential story.
A key part of this article is understanding sperm capacitation. Capacitation is a process that happens to sperm cells in the female reproductive tract, allowing them to fertilize an egg. The capacitation status of an individual sperm cell can be categorized by the amount of zinc ions present in the different parts of the sperm cell (head, midpiece, and/or tail).
For example, if there are zinc ions across the whole sperm cell, it is a non-capacitated sperm cell and cannot fertilize an egg. In contrast, if there are only zinc ions present on the midpiece of the sperm cell (middle portion), then it is a capacitated sperm cell and can fertilize an egg. Knowing the specific metrics that make a boar fertile can help us identify fertile boars to provide high quality artificial insemination, thus leading to more efficient global swine production systems.
Why It Matters
As the world population increases, there is a higher demand for production of animal-sourced foods, which are high in protein. Research in the reproductive field is crucial to increase the productivity of swine operations, thus producing more meat while using fewer resources.
How the Research Was Conducted
This article was a review summarizing findings from 39 peer-reviewed articles related to the topics of artificial insemination, boar fertility markers, and other animal reproductive physiology-related articles.
Read the Full Article
Learn more about the latest methods for optimizing the efficiency of swine reproduction by reading the full peer-reviewed journal article.
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