Disease resilience is the ability of an animal to maintain performance or to recover quickly when exposed to disease and is a viable target for pig breeding programs to improve productivity and animal welfare and reduce the use of antibiotics. However, disease resilience is difficult to select for in pig nucleus breeding programs and requires indicator traits that can be measured on animals without exposure to disease. By evaluating antibody-mediated (AMIR) and cell-mediated (CMIR) immune responses, the High Immune Response (HIR) technology has been shown to provide such indicator traits in dairy cattle. We showed that AMIR and CMIR measured on young and clinically healthy pigs are moderately heritable and that selection for higher AMIR is expected to improve growth and health under disease. Results for CMIR were not conclusive. Results suggest that AMIR is a strong genetic indicator trait candidate to select for disease resilience.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.