DNA was extracted from each sample of ear tissue following the standard phenol/chloroform extraction method. All DNA samples were qualified and normalized to a final concentration of 50 ng/μL. DNA quality was assessed on the basis of the ratios of light absorption (A260/280 and A260/230) and electrophoresis. The quality and concentration of each genomic DNA sample met the requirements for the Illumina SNP genotyping platform. The 390 individuals were genotyped using the porcine SNP60K Beadchip of Illumina (San Diego, CA, USA) [12 (link)]. Quality control was performed using PLINK v 1.07 software [17 (link)]. SNP markers with genotype missing rates >0.05, call rate <95%, minor allele frequencies <0.01, and Hardy–Weinberg p≤10E-06 were excluded. Unmapped SNPS and SNPs located on sex chromosomes were removed in accordance with the Sus scrofa10.2 assembly of the reference genome [18 (link)]. Samples and SNPs that passed the filter were selected for subsequent GWA analysis.