process to analyse the animals’ antibody-mediated immune responses to components of the clostridial vaccine. Researchers examined the levels of circulating antibodies in the samples, where a higher number of antibodies indicated a stronger antibody response from that animal in response to components the vaccine. “The higher the response, the better we think that animal has responded to that vaccine and hopefully the better it will respond to that pathogen in the environment.” The second part of the immune competence phenotype was to measure cell-mediated immunity, which involves a different aspect of the immune response. “This is more to do with the viruslike pathogens,” Amy explained. To measure this, Amy said they gave a small amount of vaccine into the skin and measured the size of the resulting lump 48 hours later. “We put the two bits of information from these independent aspects of an immune response together to come up with an overall immune competence value for that animal,” she said. The focus then shifted to creating a genomic tool that integrated information about the genetic relationships and correlations between immune competence and various production and health traits. This tool aimed to provide growers with genomic predictions for immune competence, allowing them to assess how potentially resilient the animal might be compared to how susceptible it might be. “We found there’s really favourable correlations between this immune competence trait that we’ve developed and things like worm egg count (WEC) and dag,” Amy said, noting the trait had also shown to have good heritability. “We didn’t see strong correlations with things like body weight or fleece traits, which is good because it tells us that we can select animals to be productive but also select them to have some of these resilience parameters as well. It’s providing a pretty good tool to have in that whole toolbox of options and providing the best chance for growers to identify resilient animals in the population.” Off the back of this research, a new genomic index was developed and released by Neogen, in partnership with CSIRO, SheepGenetics and AGBU, supported by the MLA Donor Company under the National Livestock Genetics Consortium. The commercial release of ImmuneDex was announced in May 2026. – 19 –
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