Significant achievements have been made in respect of pig breeding, nutrition, reproduction including endocrinology, production, health management practices, extension education and technology dissemination. Necessary details about the same areas under:

A. Animal Breeding & Production:
Breeding programmes were developed to generate the following genotypes/genetic groups:

• Improved indigenous pigs
• Crossbreds having 50:50 inheritance from Landrace and indigenous pigs
• Large White Yorkshire crossbreds having 50% indigenous inheritance
• Crossbreds having 75% Large White and 25% indigenous inheritance
• Landrace crossbreds having 25% indigenous inheritance
• Hampshire crossbreds carrying 25% and 50% indigenous inheritance
• Landrace X indigenous half-breds from reciprocal crosses
• Exotic pig viz. Landrace, Large White Yorkshire and Hampshire could be successfully raised and multiplied under organized farm conditions.
• Genetic improvement of indigenous pig through pure breed selection programme was conducted in all eight centres of AICRP under different agro- climatic conditions.
• Litter size at birth and weaning showed continuous improvement over the years. Similarly, the growth rate and body weight at 32 weeks was also increased significantly.
• However, the genetic improvement of indigenous breed through pure breed selection programme has been slow.
• All groups of crossbred had higher litter size and weight, growth rate and better feed conversion efficiency than indigenous pig.
• Large White Yorkshire crossbred (75%) and Hampshire crossbred (75%) had higher value of litter traits than their respective 50% crossbred.
• Pig can be utilized effectively as a component in integrated farming system which shall act as an insurance cover. Significant improvement on economic gain could be observed under integrated farming system.
• The crossbreds had lower back fat thickness and higher lean cuts in their carcasses than the indigenous pigs.

B. Pig Husbandry and Management:
Some salient features of achievements made and technologies generated in various aspects of pig husbandry and management are as follows:
• Collection of boar semen and artificial insemination: Technology was developed for collection of boar semen using a dummy. Artificial insemination technology by using liquid semen has been standardized and widely been used in different centres.
• Artificial milk feeder: To feed orphan piglets when suitable foster dams are not available, artificial milk feeder was developed which can be recommended to breeder farmer.
• Sprinkler system: This was designed and installed in the open pig styes for alleviating summer stress in pigs. This can be recommended to commercial farmers rearing more than 250 pigs in tropical areas where there are chances of heat stress. Wallowing can be avoided in this system, thereby saving water and labour.
• Pressure cleaning system: The system helps considerable savings in labour and time in cleaning of sheds and ensures effective cleaning of pens. In this system cleaning of a pen can be done in 4-5 minutes against 10-15 minutes in traditional system. This can be recommended for larger commercial breeding farms rearing more than 200 numbers of breeding stocks. Labour can be saved up to 1/3rd of the normal requirement in commercial farms.
• Automatic waterers: It ensures continuous drinking water availability to pigs. It can be fitted at varying heights from the floor for various categories of pigs (25 cm for weaners, 65 cm for growers and 85-90 cm for sows and boars).

C. Animal Nutrition:

Energy protein ratio for optimum production:

• 18.2 to 18.5 kcal energy per g CP for Landrace and Large White grower pigs.
• 20.4 to 21.3 kcal energy per g CP for finishing exotic pigs.
• A diet with 15.44% CP and 3.0 MCal DE per kg feed for indigenous grower pigs.
• For crossbred pigs, ratio of 16% C.P. and 3000 kcal digestible energy per kg of feed was found to be optimal.

Locally available feed resources like root crop (tapioca, sweet potato etc.), brewery waste, used tea leaves and other vegetable wastes like cabbage, collocassia etc. could be used for developing economic ration for pig.

Various alternate sources of energy and protein were identified
• Energy sources: rice polish, molasses, tamarind seed, wheat bran, tea waste, pine apple waste, jackfruit waste and cashew apple.
• Protein sources: silk worm pupae, sunflower cake

Economic ration was developed by partial or complete replacement of costly ingredient of the standard ration with the alternate feed sources.

• Replacement of maize with 20% tamarind seed and 5% molasses or 30% tamarind seed and 10% molasses increased average daily gain and lowered cost/kg body weight gain.
• Cabbage is an important vegetable crop of North East India. Generally 50 to 70% of the biological yield cabbages are used as human consumption and remaining portion is discarded as waste which is primarily the green leaves. This waste can be fed to grower and finisher pig replacing 10% of the concentrate mixer in the daily feed allowances.
• Graded replacements of maize with 40, 30 and 12 parts of rice polish/supplemented with zinc sulphate) were found to be superior in terms of ADG, feed per kg gain and cost of ration per kg gain for Large White grower pigs.
• Replacing maize partly or completely with 20% tamarind seed and 5% molasses or 30% tamarind seed and 10% molasses was found to give higher ADG (423 g) and lower cost/kg gain as compared to ADG 401 g under the standard ration.
• In pregnant and lactating gilts, maize (36% in standard ration) could be replaced with 30% rice polish or tamarind seed along with 20% molasses without affecting the performance characteristics.
• An economic ration was developed by graded replacement of maize with wheat bran.
• In indigenous grower pigs, 20 parts of maize can be replaced with bagasse and molasses mixture without any adverse effect on FCR.
• In crossbred finisher pigs, tamarind seed waste replaced up to 75% of maize without any detrimental effect on performance, carcass-characteristics and nutrient utilization.
• No significant difference in ADG (420 Vs 408 g) and FCR (4.13 Vs 4.26) when GN cake in the standard ration was replaced with sunflower cake in crossbred growers.
• Replacement of wheat bran up to 50% level with de-caffeinated tea waste lowered the cost of production in crossbred pigs.

Supplementation of yeast culture product containing useful enzyme improved average daily gain and feed conversion efficiency by 5 and 8%, respectively.

Chelated mineral could be supplemented at a dose of 0.05% along with Dicalcium Phosphate in diet for better growth and feed conversion efficiency in pig.

Fish meal can be replaced with dried cuttla fish waste silage without causing any deleterious effect on growth, feed conversion efficiency or carcass quality.

Dried Cuttla fish bone meal could be used as calcium supplement in the ration for growing pigs replacing calcium carbonate.

D. Pig Reproduction and Endocrinology
• Indigenous pigs compared unfavourably with exotic pigs in respect of litter size and weight at birth, weaning, growth rate, efficiency of feed utilization and lean meat production.
• All groups of crossbreds had higher litter productivity, growth rates and efficiency of feed utilization than the indigenous pigs.
• Large White and Hampshire crossbreds carrying 75% exotic inheritance had higher values of litter traits than those respective half-bred.

E. Health Management
• Health calendar was maintained by all the AICRP centers
• Reduced disease outbreak, pre and post weaning mortality could be achieved in most of the AICRP centers for better health care and management.