Application of Multifactorial Discriminant Analysis of Morphostructural Differentiation of Sheep

A study on phenotypic variation was carried out with a total of 905 sheep comprising 250 Koroji (120 males and 130 females), 233 Balami (115 males and 118 females), 202 Uda (98 males and 104 females) and 220 Yankasa (108 males and 112 females). The animals were selected based of alertness, health and absence of deformity. Theparameters measured were body weight (BW),body length (BL), height at wither (HTW), chestcircumference (CC), head length (HDL), headwide (HDW), ear length (EL), horn length(HNL), horn circumference (HNC), tail length(TL), rump wide (RW), rump length (RL),height at rump (HR), foreleg (FLG), hind leg(HLG), height at rump (HTR) and neck length(NL).The data were analyzed with SPSS. The results revealed that breed had significant (P<0.05) effect on phenotypic traits. This study revealed highest genetic distance between Balami and Yankasa (27.57) than followed by distance between Balami and Koroji (18.36) and the least is between Koroji and Uda (7.22). Eigen value revealed share variance (69.6) of function 1 and 19.3 and 11.1% in function 2 and 3 respectively. The result of structure matrix revealed EL has the highest loading (0.73) followed by RW (0.18) in function 1. RL has the highest loading (0.46) followed by HDL (0.43) in function 2. HDW has the highest loading (0.91) followed by BW (0.76) in function 3. Beside, standardized canonical discriminate coefficients revealed that the highest EL (1.04) and HDL (0.85) were in function 1, RL (1.26), HDL (0.89) in function 2 and HDW (1.02) and RW (0.37) in function 3. The study concluded that breeds had effect on phenotypic traits of sheep. The genetic distance showed large distance between Balami and Yankasa and low distance between Koroji and Uda. Eigenvalue showed 69.6% variations that exist between the four breeds populations. The structure matrix and standard canonical discriminant coefficient revealed EL, HDL, HDW and RW as the discriminators and predictors of variations in sheep (Balami, Koroji, Uda.

KEYWORDS: Discriminant, Sheep, Traits, Morphological.