The genetic divergence between two Large White swine lines was evaluated by multivariate analysis techniques. Three performance traits (feed conversion, back fat thickness adjusted for 100kg and average daily weight gain for males) and five reproductive traits (age at first farrowing, total number of piglets born alive, total number of piglets at 21 days, litter birth weight and at 21 days) were evaluated in this study. Data were grouped in three files. The first file consisted of male performance traits, the second of reproductive traits and the last of female performance and reproductive traits concerning the first farrowing. Multivariate analysis results showed a significant genetic divergence between lines. The Roy union-intersection test showed superiority of lines for different traits, suggesting that complementarity could be explored in crosses of the lines. Significant difference for the scores of Fisher linear discriminate function, in the analysis of each file also showed genetic divergence between the swine lines.
swine; reproductive traits; performance traits; Fisher discriminant function; Roy Test
