Utilisation d’un dispositif challenge pour la sélection sur la résistance aux maladies

Mélanie Gunia (1) , Jacques Hurtaud (2) , Mickaël Maupin (2) , Hélène Gilbert (1) , Hervé Garreau (1)

1 GenPhySE - Génétique Physiologie et Systèmes d'Elevage
2 Hypharm

Improving disease resistance is the key to improve animal welfare, reduce mortality and culling for sanitary reason in commercial farms as well as carcass condemnation in the slaughterhouses. In order to improve the disease resistance of the AGP77 maternal line, Hypharm breeding company registered health traits in the breeding nucleus and in “challenge” farms, where the environment is less favorable to the animals and the disease frequency is higher. Clinical signs have been registered on 23 773 rabbits (75% in the nucleus, 25% in the challenge farms) at the end of the test at 10 to 11 weeks of age. The disease traits were: digestive syndromes, respiratory syndromes, infectious syndromes (a composite trait including digestive and respiratory syndromes). In the nucleus 26% of the rabbits showed infectious syndromes (from minor to severe, morbidity and mortality included) versus 41% in the challenge farms. The heritability of the infectious syndromes was 0,05 ± 0,01 in the nucleus farm and 0,10 ± 0,02 in the challenge farms, which could be related to the higher phenotypic and genetic variation in the challenge farms. The genetic correlation between the infectious syndromes in the nucleus and in the challenge farms was 0.70 ± 0.13. The high genetic correlation between the two traits shows that genetic progress made in one environment will also be favorable in terms of genetic progress for the other environment. The higher heritability in the challenge farms confirms the importance of such farm to identify effectively the best reproducers.

Mots clés: génétique; résistance; maladie; lapin

Domaines: Biologie animale

Mélanie Gunia, Jacques Hurtaud, Mickaël Maupin, Hélène Gilbert, Hervé Garreau. Utilisation d’un dispositif challenge pour la sélection sur la résistance aux maladies. 17. Journées de la Recherche Cunicole, Nov 2017, Le Mans, France. 205 p. ⟨hal-01655393⟩