Get access to all handy features included in the IVIS website
- Get unlimited access to books, proceedings and journals.
- Get access to a global catalogue of meetings, on-site and online courses, webinars and educational videos.
- Bookmark your favorite articles in My Library for future reading.
- Save future meetings and courses in My Calendar and My e-Learning.
- Ask authors questions and read what others have to say.
Development of an alpacas breeding program in Peru
Get access to all handy features included in the IVIS website
- Get unlimited access to books, proceedings and journals.
- Get access to a global catalogue of meetings, on-site and online courses, webinars and educational videos.
- Bookmark your favorite articles in My Library for future reading.
- Save future meetings and courses in My Calendar and My e-Learning.
- Ask authors questions and read what others have to say.
Read
Alpaca is a South American camelid specie bred mainly to produce noble fiber for the textile industry. Suri and Huacaya are the two genetic types clearly differentiated in their morphology and fiber characteristics, with a higher proportion of the second one due to its higher robustness. The Suri has long and lustrous fibers that hang down against its body, while Huacaya fiber is crimp and grows perpendicular to the skin. Pacomarca is an experimental farm founded to act as a selection nucleus from which basic genetic improvement of alpaca fiber can spread throughout the rural communities in the Peruvian Altiplano. State-of-art techniques in animal science, such as performance recording and genealogical control are applied to demonstrate their usefulness in improvement programs under the Altiplano conditions. Searching for new ways of improving the performance of alpacas both technically and scientifically is continuously carried out while training courses for farmers are organized. Pacomarca has developed useful software (PacoPro) to carry out the integral processing of production and genealogical data. Mating is carried out individually, and gestation is diagnosed via ultrasound. Mechanized shearing is carried out under a specific own developed normative that has been adopted as national norm, so as the animal is protected and the fleece value is maximized. Breeding values predicted from genetic evaluation are used for selection. Selection objective is decreasing or removing the prickling of the alpaca fiber, and decreasing fiber diameter has been used as the main selection criterion during the last decade. Morphological traits have also been partly considered as part of the selection criterion. Genetic parameters have been precisely estimated from the data concerning these and other candidate traits to selection as well as genetic correlations among them. Fiber traits heritabilities estimated were moderate to high, those for morphological traits being moderate, those for reproductive traits low, and those for weight traits high. Genetic correlations among different type of traits were not relevant except those between fiber and weight traits that were high and unfavorable, showing that both productive aptitudes are at odds. Successful genetic trend has been observed by a reduction of fiber diameter from 22.5 to 17.9 microns from 2007 to 2019. Selection objective continues being removing the prickling of the alpaca fiber, but selection criterion has been moved to reducing the percentage of medulated fiber in the last four years. After 20 years of intense selection, the variability among the best 36 sires was still very high concerning different proportions of medullation and fiber diameter, which results promising. Selection work continues while the farm remains involved in high research standards for alpaca genetics.
Get access to all handy features included in the IVIS website
- Get unlimited access to books, proceedings and journals.
- Get access to a global catalogue of meetings, on-site and online courses, webinars and educational videos.
- Bookmark your favorite articles in My Library for future reading.
- Save future meetings and courses in My Calendar and My e-Learning.
- Ask authors questions and read what others have to say.
Comments (0)
Ask the author
0 comments