Immunocompetence traits and their inheritance pattern in Kadaknath native chicken

Economics of poultry production can be improved by reducing input on health care (major investment) and increasing production. It necessitates evaluation and exploitation of immunocompetence traits of germplasm. An investigation was carried out on 174 Kadaknath native chickens, maintained at this institute to evaluate immunocompetence profile. Data on three traits viz., antibody response to sheep erythrocytes and serum levels of lysozyme and IgG, were analyzed by least squares analysis of variance taking sire as random and sex as fixed effects. Sire had significant effect on lysozyme (P< 0.05) and IgG (P< 0.08), but sex on none. Haemagglutination titre and lysozyme and IgG levels averaged 7.93± 0.24, 5.07± 0.29g/ml and 12.15± 0.48 μg/ml, respectively. Heritability ranged from medium to high but had higher standard errors. Phenotypic correlations among traits were very low and non-significant. Haemagglutination titre had highly negative genetic correlations with lysozyme level but highly positive with IgG level. The study demonstrated relatively higher immunocompetence profile in Kadaknath chicken. It was also inferred that improvement in general immunocompetence could be achieved by selection for combination of different facets of host's immune systems.