The effect of concentration and storage time on short-term storage of ram sperm

Abstract

The present study was conducted to observe the effect of different dilution rates on ram sperm motion characters (motility, progressivity, velocity and average of speed), head diameter, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and live intact acrosome rate during liquid storage for 96 h at 5ºC. Normospermic semen samples that obtained from 4 adult rams were pooled. Pooled semen was split into two aliquots; Low Dilution Rate (LDR) (400 million) and High Dilution Rate (HDR) (20 million) motile spermatozoa per insemination dose/0.25 mL straw and were diluted with a skim milk-egg yolk-based extender. It was observed that the Total Motility (TM) and total progressivity of the LDR group decreased more rapidly than HDR group over time, in general. From the 12th h to the 96th h; the rapid progressivity (P<0.01), MMP (P<0.05), live sperm rates with intact acrosome (P<0.01) and straightness (STR) (P<0.001) of the HDR group results were statistically better than LDR. It was concluded that the spermatological properties examined during storage were damaged at different times and were affected by sperm concentration and also storage time.

Keywords

• acrosome
• concentration
• kinematics
• mmp
• motility
• ram
• semen
• extender
• storage