Heritability Estimate for Antibody Response to Vaccination and Survival to a Newcastle Disease Infection of Native chicken in a Low-Input Production System.

The Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is the deadliest chicken pathogen in low-input village poultry, and selecting for NDV resistance has been recommended as a sustainable strategy in backyard poultry production systems. However, selecting for disease resistance needs precision data from either a big population sample size or on many generations with good pedigree records for effective prediction of heritability ( ) and breeding values of the foundation stock. Such conditions are almost impossible to meet in low-input backyard production systems.