TOP SIRE 2026–2027 INDUSTRY NEWS CSIRO RESEARCH INTO DISEASE RESILIENCE TRAITS Disease is a significant financial burden on the Australian sheep industry with the top five sheep diseases costing the industry approximately $1.5 billion, according to research commissioned by Meat and Livestock Australia. Among the largest contributors to these costs are internal parasites, weaner failure-to-thrive and flystrike. While chemical and management strategies remain essential, research indicates that measuring resilience traits in Merino flocks could be a useful resource for producers. Amy Bell, a senior experimental scientist at CSIRO Armidale, led a recent multi-year project focused on immune competence and its role as a component of resilience, building on data generated through Merino Lifetime Productivity Projects (MLP) in partnership with Australian Wool Innovation (AWI). “We know that throughout an animal’s life in the production environment they are exposed to stressors, which are things that can make it challenging for them to be productive,” Amy said. “What we looked for as part of our research was how we could develop tools for farmers to use so that they can identify those animals that cope best with those stressful situations and, if they do go through a period of stress, that they are able to remain productive or return to productivity as quickly as possible.” With access to phenotype and genotype information for over 5000 animals through the MLP, Amy highlighted the value of having a large number of industry-relevant animals available for testing. “If we are looking at a new trait, we want to have a really good handle on potential correlations and what the heritability of this trait looks like in a commercial setting,” she explained. “If we are expecting people to use this information in their production environments, we wanted to make sure that what we were measuring was what farmers and sheep producers would see in a typical commercial operation.” Amy explained that the immune competence trait was complex. “We looked at this as an opportunity to measure a wide range of traits relating to production and health in these animals, particularly during that challenging time from weaning to yearling age,” she said. “For the measurements relating to immune competence, we focused on a time in the animal’s life when they were under a reasonable amount of stress because animals respond differently when they’re under stress compared to when they’re not.” The project immune competence measurements were conducted in the period around weaning, when the lambs were around three-and-a-half months of age. Lambs received a clostridial vaccination at marking and again on the day the yard weaning process commenced, about six to seven weeks post-marking. Blood samples were collected two weeks into the weaning – 18 –
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