Differentiation of three sheep breeds which have a genetic relationship by body sizes

Abstract

Sumatera Composite (SC) sheep and Barbados Black Belly cross (BC) sheep are two sheep that have half the genetics of Sumatera local (SL) sheep. Populations with partially the same genetic composition are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Based on female body size sheep, an analysis was carried out to distinguish the three breed sheep that have genetic relationship. The research was conducted using SC, BC and SL ewe measured in body weight and 8 body sizes. Analysis of variance and canonical discriminant analysis, Mahalanobis distance, plotting canonical and dendogram were performed by SAS software ver. 9.0. Body weight and all body sizes of SC and BC sheep were significantly different from SL sheep. Canonical discriminant analysis successfully could differentiate among the three sheep breeds that have genetic relationship. The results of genetic distance estimation showed that SC sheep had genetic closeness to BC sheep compared to SL sheep. The size of the skull length, body weight and chest girth were the breed differentiation variable in this study.