The association between sire immune competence and antibody response of progeny

Application Selection for improved immune competence in sires has the potential to improve antibody response to immune challenges and improve survival of progeny in commercial piggery environments.
Introduction Procedures using commercially available test antigens have been developed to assess the immune competence phenotype of pigs (Harper et al., 2017), which combines measures of an animal’s ability to mount both antibody-mediated (Ab-IR) and cell-mediated immune response (Cell-IR). In previous work, Harper et al. (2018) demonstrated that sire differences in Cell-IR, but not Ab-IR, were associated with breeding values for pre-weaning survival of their progeny. We speculated that extensive post-weaning vaccination schedules for progeny potentially influenced associations between sire immune competence phenotypes and breeding values for post-weaning survival observed. The hypothesis of this study was that the antibody response of progeny reared in commercial environments would be favourably associated with immune competence phenotypes of their sires, when assessed using common model antigens.