Pork quality of autochthonous genotype Casertana, crossbred Casertana x Duroc and hybrid Pen ar Lan in relation to farming systems

In the last decades, the development of livestock has coincided with improvements of the animals performance. The swine has been strongly selected for several traits that determined a significant spread of some genetic types, more productive than the old autochthonous genetic types (AGT). Therefore, the AGT suffered a growing demographic contraction. The AGT are able to reduce the loss of genetic variability, pot entially useful for the new generation and they play an important economic role for their productive capacity in harsh environments; furthermore, they can be used to obtain natural and ‘traitdional' products. In the current research the black AGT Casertana (CT) was compared with the crossbreed CT× Duroc in relation to gender (castrated males and entire females) and farming systems: Open Air and utdoor (plus access to the bush) for some qualitative properties of meat. In addition ‘Fiocco’ ham, a raditional product, from CT, CT×DU and Pen ar Lan pigs was analyzed. The results showed that the CT pigs had a significantly higher percentage of fat, a thicker adipose tissue, and their meat had lower values of hardness, chewiness, shear force, and appeared significantly redder than other genotypes meat. The farming systems and gender did not affect the carcass composition and physical traits of meat.