Economic Analysis of the Use of VCS2000 for Pork Carcass Meat Yield Grading in Korea.

Currently, the pork industry is incorporating in-line automation with the aim of increasing the slaughtered pork carcass throughput while monitoring quality and safety. In Korea, 21 parameters (such as back-fat thickness and carcass weight) are used for quality grading of pork carcasses. Recently, the VCS2000 system-an automatic meat yield grading machine system-was introduced to enhance grading efficiency and therefore increase pork carcass production. The VCS2000 system is able to predict pork carcass yield based on image analysis. This study also conducted an economic analysis of the system using a cost-benefit analysis. The subsection items of the cost-benefit analysis considered were net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and benefit/cost ratio (BC ratio), and each method was verified through sensitivity analysis. For our analysis, the benefits were grouped into three categories: the benefits of reducing labor costs, the benefits of improving meat yield production, and the benefits of reducing pig feed consumption through optimization. The cost-benefit analysis of the system resulted in an NPV of approximately 615.6 million Korean won, an IRR of 13.52%, and a B/C ratio of 1.65.

Genetic Diversity and Ancestral Study for Korean Native Pigs Using 60K SNP Chip.

The Korean native pig (KNP; Sus scrofa coreanus) is an indigenous porcine breed in South Korea considered as a valuable but dwindling genetic resource. Studies using diverse methodologies and genetic markers suggest that this population originated from the Manchu province of Northeastern China and migrated approximately 3000 years ago into the Korean peninsula. This study aimed to verify those findings by performing diversity and ancestral analyses using the 60K single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) BeadChip on 891 pigs of 47 breeds worldwide. We also performed principal component analysis (PCA), ancestry analyses, phylogenetic tree analysis using SNPhylo, and linkage disequilibrium analysis. Furthermore, we generated heatmap, obtained Nei's genetic distance and FST values, and explored the heterozygosity of commercial and native Korean pigs. The results demonstrated that KNP pigs are more closely related to European breeds than to Chinese breeds. In addition, as previous studies have suggested, our admixture analyses indicated that KNP pigs showed distinguishable genetic structure.