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Abstract
We studied the relationship between body morphometric traits, and their underlying association with milk production (MP), lactation length (LL), first calving interval (FCI) and subsequent calving interval (CI) of crossbred progeny of Murrah × Jafarabadi buffalo aiming to assist in selection programs. We carried out principal component analysis (PCA) of the body morphometric traits, which include breast width (BW), thigh width (THW), hip width (HW), rump width (RW), rump length (RL), body depth (BD), body length (BL), height withers (HEW), rear height (RH), shoulder width (SW), thorax width (TW), loin width (LW), distance from the head to ischium (DHI), and thoracic perimeter (TP). We determined the association of morphometric traits with milk/reproduction traits using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The analysis revealed that the first six PCA accounted for 82.14% of the total observed variation, and the traits THW, HW, TW, LW, RW, HEW, TP, RH, and BW, accounted for almost half (48.00%) of the total variance indicating a higher contribution in body structural conformation. The first canonical function was significant (p<0.05), accounted for 72.46% of the total variance, and the canonical correlation was 0.56, indicating the dependence between both groups of traits. Higher canonical loadings were obtained for LL (0.49), FCI (0.46), BW (-0.71), BL (-0.56), DHI (-0.34), HEW, (-0.38) and TP (-0.50). These traits were most important for the derivation of canonical statistical variables, and presented a higher canonical correlations (r) between the dependent (LL/FCI) and independent (BW, BL, DHI, HEW and TP) groups. The results could suggest that the body morphometric traits THW, HW, TW, LW, RW, HEW, BD, TP, RH, and BW could play important role in body structural composition, indicating a suitable functional type, and aid designing of selection programs for buffalo breeding.
Highlights
Raw milk and dairy products are important components of the human diet in many regions of the world [1]
Our results showed that milk production (MP), calving interval (CI), thorax width (TW), rump width (RW), rump length (RL) and body depth (BD) presented low canonical loadings, which many help in explaining of the relationship between both studied groups (Milk/reproduction and body morphometric traits), as shown in Fig 3 and Table 4
Principal component analysis allows a reduction of the number of variables to explain the variance of the body conformation in crossbred progeny of Murrah × Jafarabadi buffalo
Summary
Raw milk and dairy products are important components of the human diet in many regions of the world [1]. Reproductive efficiency and milk production have been used as selection criteria owing to their important role in the financial viability of dairy farms [3]. These criteria follow a body index and standard scores called a functional type, which refers to the association between body conformation and performance of an individual animal. According to Agudelo-Gomez et al [14], buffalo body morphometric traits can be used to predict the ability for commercial exploitation and when applied in breeding selection programs may contribute to creating an appropriate functional type
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