Abstract
SUMMARY A total of 347 adult female sheep from the Setif area (Algeria), were investigated for thirteen qualitative morphological traits and eighteen body measurements. Sampling included populations from each of three environmental areas: Northern, Central and Southern. Coefficients of variation of the 18 body measurements ranged from 4.4 % to 34.3 %, showing high heterogeneity. Canonical analyses showed that differences in body measurements between the three populations were large (p<0.0001). Only nine traits were significant at the stepwise discriminant and the others were removed from the final model. Mahalanobis distances were found to be very large: 10.53 between North and South, 9.23 between Centre and South and 7.59 between North and Centre. Discriminant analysis showed that most of the populations were classified into their environmental-area: North (74.59 %), Center (84.0 %) and South ( 97.14 %). Correspondence analysis indicated large differences between populations and uniformity within populations. The information produced will constitute the basis for further characterization and will facilitate the development of conservation strategies for Algerian sheep-populations.
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