Association of BoLA-DRB3 alleles with tick-borne disease tolerance in dairy cattle in a tropical environment.

Tick-borne disease is one of the most harmful tropical diseases in dairy production. Selection of dairy cows for tolerance to tick-borne disease is a challenging concept for dairy breeders in the tropics. The objectives of this study were (1) to detect specific tick-borne pathogen in cattle of different genetics and (2) to examine the polymorphisms of DRB3.2 alleles in Thai dairy cattle and find the allelic association with tick-borne disease tolerance. Specific primers to Anaplasma marginale (AM), Babesia bigemina (BG) and Babesia bovis (BB) were used to detect the infections by PCR. The results showed that the high proportion of infections were found in Bos indicus (Sahiwal, n=95) and crossbred Holstein × Zebu (75:25 Holstein:Zebu, n=101), compared to high Holstein fraction crossbreed (≥ 87.5% Holstein, n=187). The proportion of triple infections was also highly found in high Holstein fractions crossbreed. This study confirmed that Zebuine (Bos indicus) had a higher degree of tolerance, even when infected by tick-borne pathogens, compared to high Holstein fraction crossbred. The associated alleles of DRB3.2 for tick-borne pathogen infection tolerance were found: DRB3*14 and *41 were found to be tolerant to A. marginale; *14 to B. bovis; and *10 and *51 to B. bigemina. These tolerance alleles could be used as potential markers for selection in dairy genetic evaluation. The associated alleles for susceptibility were also found: *2 was found to be susceptible to A. marginale; *3 and *16 to B. bovis; and *20 to B. bigemina. These susceptibility alleles could be used as markers for culling, and selection favoring susceptibility alleles should be considered to maintain heterozygote advantage and pathogen-specific memories in the herd.