Chinese scientists have bred new high-quality pig strains, named Lansi pigs, an achievement to help reduce the country's heavy reliance on foreign pig breeds.

The new pig strains, bred by a research team led by Li Kui from the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, have recently been approved by the national livestock and poultry genetic resources committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The successful breeding of the Lansi pig strains marks the independent intellectual property rights of Chinese pig breeds, and provides important technology and valuable experience for the improvement of a large number of imported pig breeds in China, Li said.

China is the world's largest producer and consumer of pigs, with pork production and consumption accounting for 44 percent and 46 percent of the world's total respectively. However, over 90 percent of pigs used for commercial production rely on imported breeds, according to Li.

Since 2010, Li's team has been using new biological breeding technologies such as molecular marker assisted breeding and whole genome assisted breeding to cultivate efficient and high-quality breeding pigs based on mainstream commercial imported pig breeds.

The team has established a breeding population of over 2,000 heads of original breeding pigs, and developed a series of breeding analysis software and database systems, significantly improving breeding efficiency, shortening breeding time, and improving breeding accuracy, according to Li.

The team has successfully cultivated three specialized strains of Lansi pigs over 14 years. According to third-party authoritative institutions, the main economic traits and the disease resistance of the new strains have significantly improved compared to the imported original varieties, showing broad market prospects, Li added.