Abstract
Abstract. A total of 357 adult cows and 29 sires belonging to the long-horned Niger Zebu Bororo cattle population were assessed for 13 body measurements and 11 qualitative traits. Data were jointly analysed with 311 cows and 64 sires belonging to other four West African zebu cattle populations, sampled in Burkina Faso and Benin, representative of both the short-horned and the long-horned West African zebu groups using multivariate statistical methods. Besides the other long-horned zebu breed analysed (Zebu Mbororo of Burkina Faso), Zebu Bororo cattle tended to have the highest mean values for all body measurements. Mahalanobis distance matrices further informed that pairs involving Zebu Bororo cattle had the higher differentiation of the dataset. However, contour plots constructed using eigenvalues computed via principal component analysis (PCA) illustrated a lack of differentiation among West African zebu cattle populations at the body measurements level. Correspondence analysis carried out on the 11 qualitative traits recorded allowed for ascertaining a clear differentiation between the Zebu Bororo and the other zebu cattle populations analysed which, in turn, did not show a clear differentiation at the qualitative type traits level. In our data, Zebu Bororo cattle had in high frequency qualitative features such as dropped ears, lyre-shaped horns and red-pied coat colour that are not frequently present in the other West African zebu populations analysed. A directional selection due to a rough consensus of the stock-keepers may be hypothesised. Performance of further analyses to assess the degree in which such breeding differences may be related to genetic or production differences are advised.
Highlights
It is accepted that zebu cattle moved and spread into Africa in different historical waves (Payne, 1970; Hanotte et al, 2002) there is archaeological and genetic evidence suggesting that West African zebu cattle is the present-day representative of an ancient introgression of zebu cattle into Africa (Magnavita, 2006; Pérez-Pardal et al, 2010)
The long-horned zebu includes two subgroups according to horn shape: the lyre-horned subgroup, with the Gobra and White Fulani cattle as the main representatives, and the long-lyrehorned subgroup consisting of the Red Fulani cattle, which
Analyses focusing on body measurements are relatively frequent in East African zebu (Mwacharo et al, 2006), zoometric studies on West African zebu cattle were scant before Traoré et al (2015, 2016)
Summary
It is accepted that zebu cattle moved and spread into Africa in different historical waves (Payne, 1970; Hanotte et al, 2002) there is archaeological and genetic evidence suggesting that West African zebu cattle is the present-day representative of an ancient introgression of zebu cattle into Africa (Magnavita, 2006; Pérez-Pardal et al, 2010). No selection policies exist and the existence of a strong east-to-west gene flow is accepted (Hanotte et al, 2002), there is consensus on the existence of local populations within West African zebu that can be considered different breeds Some of them, such as the long-horned Red Bororo (Ibeagha-Awemu and Erhardt, 2006) and White Fulani (Ibeagha-Awemu and Erhardt, 2006; Tawah and Rege, 1996a; Yakubu et al, 2009) or the short-horned zebu Gudali (Tawah and Rege, 1996b), have received some attention to document their main phenotypic and genetic characteristics. Large morphological and genetic differences among local subpopulations within a breed are likely to exist (Rege and Tawah, 1999), and accumulating information on a different local population is still a challenge in the characterisation of native African livestock
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