Preliminary analysis of immune competence traits in northern Australian tropically adapted beef breeds

Disease has welfare, production and cost implications for beef enterprises. Immune competence traits have been developed for the genetic evaluation for general disease resistance in the Angus Australia national genetic evaluation (Hine et al. 2019). Immune competence has not previously been recorded in northern Australian beef breeds. This paper reports preliminary results, including if there were genetic variation for immune competence traits in tropically adapted beef breeds.