EFFECT OF COLLECTION FREQUENCY, EXTENDER AND THAWING TEMPERATURE ON THE MOTILITY RECOVERY OF CRYOPRESERVED DROMEDARY CAMEL SPERMATOZOA

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to examine ejaculate characteristics and quality of camel bull semen maintained under high (3 /week) and low (2 /week) collection frequencies during the breeding season. Ejaculate characteristics included motility, volume, concentration, detached acrosome, sperm abnormalities, pH, seminal plasma osmolarity and freezing point depression. Significant differences (P<0.01) were observed for ejaculate volume being 13.5 ml versus 7.5 ml for low and high collection frequency, respectively and also pH value (P<0.05) for low frequency of 8.7 versus 8.3 for high frequency semen collection. The second objective was to determine the optimum thawing temperatures (slow thawing vs. rapid thawing) for cryopreserved camel semen extended in tris lactose extender supplemented with different concentrations of α-amylase. Rapid thawing showed higher post-thaw motility for the control samples as well as the samples at different concentrations of the α-amylase treated samples. That leads to an overall significant difference (P<0.01) in post-thaw motility for rapid thawing being 56.33 % compared to 47.66 % for slow thawed cryopreserved samples. No significant effect was detected for neither the detached acrosome percentage nor the sperm abnormalities. According to the present results scheduling a collection program of two semen collection times per week, using alpha-amylase supplemented tris-lactose extender with rapid thawing protocol is recommended for a desired high yield of acceptable insemination doses during the breeding season of male camels.