Phenotypic differentiation among cattle populations based on biometric traits

Abstract

An attempt was made to differentiate 3 cattle populations of Rajasthan state i.e. Kankrej (407), Sanchori (152) and Nari (175) by canonical discriminant analysis (CDA), a multivariate technique using 12 different biometric traits. Single trait analysis variance showed that Sanchori cows had largest size, Kankrej was intermediate and Nari was the smallest. The step-wise discriminant analysis showed that distance between hip bones, heart girth, horn length, face width, ear length, face width, horn diameter, height at withers, tail length without switch, tail length and body length were the most discriminating traits between these three cattle populations. The Mahalanobis distances between these cattle populations indicated that they are three distinct populations. The dendrogram based on the average linkage method showed that there are 2 clusters; cluster one includes Nari and Sanchori cows and cluster two Kankrej cows, clearly separated from cluster one. The individual assignment to different cattle populations by the cross-validation classification approach showed that 100% of the Kankrej cows, 98.08% of Sanchori cows and 98.98% of Nari cows were correctly assigned into their source populations. The present study revealed that the free canonical approach is proved useful and informative in differentiating between 3 cattle populations and suggested that Sanchori and Nari may be established/registers as a distinct breed.