Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Former MSc student , Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran
2 Associate Professor, Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran
3 Department of Animal and Poultry Science, College of Aburaihan, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
4 Assistant Professor, Research Center of Special Domestic Animals, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran
5 Associate Professor, Clinical Pathplogy, Faculty of Vatarinary, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran
Abstract
In the current research, immune system responses against sheep red blood cells (SRBC) and Newcastle disease virus (NDV) in two sexes of both wild and Italian speckled quails were investigated. To compare phenotypic differences of two sexes for humoral immune responses a one-way analysis was applied, and a simple animal model using the MCMCglmm package of R software was used for genetic analysis, assuming variance components between the two sexes are different. Phenotypic comparison between males and females did not show a significant difference in any of the strains. In both strains, heritability of humoral immunity in males was higher than females. Results showed, in wild strain, heritability of IgT in males (0.187), and IgY in females (0.177) were higher than other estimates. The highest heritability was related to the NDV, which was estimated to be 0.214 and 0.268 in males and females, respectively. Therefore, genetic selection for IgN can be expected to improve the performance of the birds’ humoral immune system. Likewise, according to the higher estimates of immune responses in males, genetic selection of humoral immune responses for IgN, leads to higher genetic progression.
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