Heritability Estimate for Antibody Response to Vaccination and Survival to a Newcastle Disease Infection of Native chicken in a Low-Input Production System

ABSTRACT: The Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is the deadliest chicken pathogen in low-input village poultry, and selecting for NDV resistance has been recommended as a sustainable strategy in backyard poultry production systems. However, selecting for disease resistance needs precision data from either a big population sample size or on many generations with good pedigree records for effective prediction of heritability (h2) and breeding values of the foundation stock. Such conditions are almost impossible to meet in low-input backyard production systems. This study aimed at proposing a realistic method for estimating the heritability of the immune response to vaccination and survival of NDV infection in village poultry production to inform a breeding strategy for ND resistance in Cameroon. A 1 and 3% selection intensity of cocks and hens for higher antibody (ab) response (ABR) to vaccination followed by progeny selection of chickens who survived an experimental NDV infection was conducted from an initial population of 1,702 chickens. The selection induced an increase of 1012.47units/ml (p<0.01) of the NDV antibody of the progeny as well as an effective survival rate (ESR) increase of 11.75%. Three methods were used to estimate the heritability (

SUBMITTER: Hako Touko B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8514834 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature