Productive and Reproductive Traits and Clinical Epidemiological Measures in Discriminant Analysis between Baladi Buffaloes and Crossbred
Productive and Reproductive Traits and Clinical Epidemiological Measures in Discriminant Analysis between Baladi Buffaloes and Crossbred
Ahmed Fathy1, Rania A. Hassan2, Essam S. Soliman3*
ABSTRACT
Crossbreeding represents an important procedure that can be used in animal breeding and improvement programs. Clinical epidemiology relay on the collaboration between biostatistics and epidemiology to provide a basis for the veterinary field and clinical care. Since discriminant analysis as a parametric test is more powerful than its non-parametric alternatives, we aimed to evaluate the performance of the single discriminant analysis in classification between Baladi buffaloes and crossbred using clinical epidemiological measures of some productive and reproductive traits such as milk yield (MY/kg), days in milk (DIM/days), age at first calving (AFC/months), calving interval (CI/months), days open (DO/days), dry period (DP/weeks), number of services per conception (SPC rate), and days to first insemination (DFI/days). The raw data on 927 buffaloes (763 crossbred and 164 Baladi buffaloes) were collected from a dairy farm in Al Sharqia governorate- Egypt. The results showed that MY/kg, DIM/days, AFC/months, CI/months, DO/days, DP/weeks, SPC rate, and DFI/days were good discriminators between both buffalo breeds. The discriminant function showed a significant association between the predictor variables and groups of dependent variables. The model explains about 19.2% of the variations in the dependent variables. The individual percentages correctly classified for the analysis, cross-validation, and holdout samples were 83.1, 82.6, and 82.2%, respectively. The three benchmarks used to judge the goodness of the model (Maximum chance = 83.1, proportional chance = 66.2, and press Q = 134.4) showed a model with good predictive power.
Keywords | Baladi buffaloes and crossbred, Canonical Correlation, Clinical Epidemiology, Discriminant Analysis, Productive and Reproductive Traits.
To share on other social networks, click on any share button. What are these?
