At the national level, the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement (CCSI) was formed as part of the privatization of national genetic evaluation services. CGIL has developed a close working relationship with CCSI. In an advisory capacity, CGIL members have served and currently serve on CCSI advisory committees; the Genetics and Software Committees. CGIL has also worked in partnership with CCSI on collaborative research such as measures of connectedness among herds, potential adjustments for heterogeneity of within-herd variation, and an independent validation of the genetic evaluation models used in the national system at CCSI.
On a regional basis, CGIL has worked with swine breeders in Ontario through Ontario Swine Improvement (OSI), the organization created from the provincial privatization of swine genetic improvement services. CGIL has a long standing relationship with the provincial swine improvement program that continued following the formation of OSI. CGIL computes monthly genetic evaluations for multiple sow productivity traits that augments the national evaluations for a single sow productivity trait. For over 7 years, these evaluations have been an integral part of the genetic evaluations and selection tools provided through OSI's on-farm software program "OSIP".
CGIL has also collaborated individually with a number of swine improvement companies. As the national and provincial swine industries continue to see a trend towards fewer but larger hog farms, the breeding industry has had to adapt to be able to supply larger quantities of uniform, high quality, high health replacement animals. In order to meet this trend, individual local breeders have been forming alliances and creating innovative corporate structures to compete with multi-national swine breeding companies in an evolving marketplace. CGIL members have worked with Swine Genetics Ontario, Quality Swine (Shamrock Group), Bodmin and Genex to name a few of these breeder alliances and moderate size breeding companies. CGIL members have also worked with large, multi-national breeding companies like Pig Improvement Corporation and Cotswold.
CGIL's role in swine improvement research has expanded with the aforementioned developments in the national and regional swine industries. CGIL has maintained a role in research and development of traditional genetic evaluation and improvement techniques. At the same time, CGIL has found an emerging role for research and development in the areas of molecular and quantitative genetics with the focus on detection and exploitation of quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting economically important traits of interest. Recent projects are focusing more on QTL detection and exploitation compared to several years ago where genetic evaluation and improvement techniques were the focus.