Ticks and tick borne diseases cause significant loss in livestock production with about 80% world’s cattle at risk. The cost of chemical control is high and there is an ever increasing tick resistance to chemicals. Genetic selection as alternative long term control strategy is constrained by laborious phenotyping using tick counts or scores. This study explores the use of host volatile semiochemicals that may be attractants or repellents to ticks as a novel phenotype with potential to be used as a proxy in selection programmes. About a 100 young cattle composed of Bos indicus and Bos taurus were artificially infested with 2,500 R. decoloratus larvae with daily female ticks (4.5 mm) counts taken from day 20 post infection. Volatile compounds we sampled before and after tick infestation. We identified three pre-infestation volatile compounds that were associated with tick resistance (P-value<0.01) and one post infestation (P-value<0.05) using 6 day repeated measure analysis. The high correlation coefficients (r=0.66) between repeated records with all volatile compounds support the potential predictive value for volatile compounds in selective breeding programmes for tick resistance in cattle.
Proceedings of 12th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP)
Technical and species orientated innovations in animal breeding, and contribution of genetics to solving societal challenges
EditorsR.F. Veerkamp and Y. de Haas
Published: 2022 Pages: 3364
eISBN: 978-90-8686-940-4
Book Type: Conference Proceedings
90. In search of a new tool for phenotyping tick resistance in cattle
O. Matika Related information
1The Roslin Institute and R(D)SVS, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
3Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
*Corresponding author: oswald. matika@roslin. ed. ac. uk
, S. Foster Related information3Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
*Corresponding author: oswald.
2Biointeractions and Crop Protection Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2JQ, United Kingdom.
, N. Githaka Related information4Animal and Human Health Programme, 4International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya.
, C. Mwendia Related information5Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Egerton University, Kenya.
, H. Brown Related information1The Roslin Institute and R(D)SVS, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
, K. Watson Related information3Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
, A. Djikeng Related information3Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health, Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, EH25 9RG, United Kingdom.
, M. Birkett Related information2Biointeractions and Crop Protection Department, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2JQ, United Kingdom.
Pages: 410 - 413
Published Online: February 09, 2023
Abstract: