Variations in the DNA sequences of pigs can affect how individual animals grow, develop, reproduce and respond to pathogens and diseases, medicines and vaccines.

One of the most common types of genetic variation is the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, or SNP – pronounced ‘snip’. A SNP is a single DNA base-pair mutation at a specific locus, usually consisting of two alleles. While genotyping measures general genetic variation, SNP genotyping specifically measures the genetic variations of SNPs between individuals, and in pigs, provides information on genetic markers for a wide variety of traits, such as pork quality, carcass quality, disease resistance and reproductive traits.

Hypor uses SNP genotyping as standard but has recently created a low density SNP-chip, the QuickSNP (pronounced ‘Quicksnip’), which has hundreds of thousands of probes on a tiny chip to enable many SNPs to be analyzed and identified simultaneously.

Hypor's QuickSNP includes more than 100 genetic markers. The QuickSNP will allow for more precise selection of the right breeding animals to improve pork quality.