Genetic Study to Establish the Relationship between Sire Fertility and Daughter Performance Traits among Murrah Buffaloes

Abstract

Background: Bull fertility assumes a vital part in bovine reproduction. Since selection intensity of bulls picked for breeding programs in dairy industry is high as they can sire extensively larger counts of offspring as compared to their female counterparts. Therefore the present study was designed to establish the relationship between the sire fertility and performance traits of the Murrah buffaloes. Methods: A total of 12898 observations were recorded with respect to routine seminal parameters from 130 Murrah breeding bulls spanning between 1995 and 2019 (25 years). Data consisted of 2161 records of 305 days milk yield (305 MY) and lactation length (LL), 2160 records of lactation milk yield (LMY), 2155 records of peak milk yield (PMY), 1905 records of average fat percentage (FP), 1542 records of service period (SP) and 1914 records of conception rate (CR) have been utilized for the current study. Breeding values with respect to 33 Murrah buffalo bulls were taken for the correlation studied and for further ranking of the sires. Result: Average mean values of seminal parameter viz. ejaculated volume (EV), colour (Col), consistency (Con), log sperm concentration (LSC), mass activity (MA), initial motility (IM) and Post-Thaw Motility (PTM) were as 3.25±0.01 (ml), 3.50±0.01 (0-5 scale), 2.52±0.04 (0-5 scale), 3.11±0.01, 2.25±0.01 (0-5 scale), 64.22±0.15 and 38.62±0.19 (%) respectively. The arithmetic means of LMY, 305 MY, PY, LL, FP, CR and SP were calculated to be 2343.33±17.77, 2142.13±13.77, 12.57±0.06, 328.41±2.11, 7.39±0.01, 0.52±0.09 and 166.36±2.75, respectively. The sire rank correlation between the seminal attributes and performance traits was ranged between -0.57±0.15 (ejaculate volume and lactation milk yield) and 0.49±0.16 (semen consistency and lactation milk yield). Association between the fertility using routine semen quality parameters would be helpful to assess the bull fertility which lead to the improvement in the herd fertility.