Indian Journal of Animal Research

  • Chief EditorK.M.L. Pathak

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Effect of genetic and environmental factors on semen production and quality of Madura cattle in Indonesia 

Koko Wisnu Prihatin1,2,*, Luqman Hakim3, Sucik Maylinda3, V.M. Ani Nurgiartiningsih3
1Veterinary Officer of National Artificial Insemination Center-Singosari, Ministry of Agriculture Republic of Indonesia, PO Box 08 Toyomarto Village 65153, Malang, Indonesia.
2Master Program of Livestock Science, Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Brawijaya University, Jl. Veteran 65145, Malang, Indonesia.
3Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Brawijaya University, Jl. Veteran 65145, Malang, Indonesia.

The indigenous Madura cattle semen production and quality were evaluated. Total of 2275 semen collection records from 11 bulls were analyzed to evaluate the genetic potency of semen productions. The genetic evaluation was described as an estimation of bull semen volume, sperm concentration and sperm individual motility. Data were analyzed by HGLM-REML with environmental factors of age, seasons, interval of semen collections and frequency of ejaculations as fixed effect. The result showed that the age and the ejaculation frequency affected to all variables; an interval of semen collections affected to both semen volume and sperm concentrations; and seasons only affected to sperm concentrations. Repeatability estimate of semen volume, sperm concentration and sperm individual motility were 0.376, 0.445 and 0.567 respectively. It can be concluded that the quality of ejaculate was less affected by environmental factors, supported by the good adaptation of indigenous Madura cattle under the local climatic conditions and management in the artificial insemination station.

Madura cattle have an important position in the social and cultural life of the Madura society in Indonesia. However its breeding trends declined since the artificial insemination using exotic Bos taurus breed was allowed on Madura islands (Kutsiyah, 2012; Widi et al., 2013). In order to maintain the Madura cattle population, the local provincial government has been cooperating with the National Center for Artificial Insemination-Singosari to escalate frozen semen productions; and to propagate AI mating program for Madura cattle since 2010.

The important reproductive parameters used for frozen semen productions are the semen volume, sperm concentration and individual motility per ejaculation (Den, 1992; Karoui et al., 2011). Besides genetic factor, semen production and quality were also influenced by environmental factors such as age, season, semen collections interval and frequency of ejaculation (Mathevon et al., 1998b).

Genetic and environmental influences have led to variations in successive sperm production of each bull. Hence, the correlation from the result of repetitive measurements of the individual can be used to determine genetic quality of individual as the repeatability value (Falconer, 1981). The repeatability value is important to predict the future semen productions of each Madura bull in order to obtain an efficiency of the frozen semen productions. Therefore, this study was conducted in order to evaluate the effect of genetic and environmental factors including repeatability estimates on indigenous Madura bull semen production and quality in Indonesia.
A total of 2275 ejaculation data records (2012-2014) were derived from 11 Madura bulls aged 3 to 7 years and maintained at National Artificial Insemination Center (BBIB) - Singosari, the livestock frozen semen production center under the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture that was located in Malang, East Java (7° 50’14.6 “S 112° 38’43.7" E). All bulls received equal daily feed and equal management during the semen production period.

Semen collections performed regularly twice a week with 3 and 4 days interval each collection. Semen has collected using artificial vagina and the collections performed with the ejaculation frequency 1-2 times within 15 minutes   interval each bull. All the processes of semen collection were started from 08.30 am regularly.

The ejaculate volume was measured directly from semen collections tube scale after ejaculations. The sperm concentration values were taken from the dilution of 35µl semen in 3.5 ml 0.9% sodium chloride measured by -Minitube® Photometer SDM6 and the individual sperm motility was obtained from microscopic examination of the dilution the 0.1 µl semen in 0.1 µl semen extender on the surface of Minitube® Slide Warmer under Olympus CX21 microscope with 200 x magnifications.

Statistical analysis was performed using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model (HGLM)-REML by Genstat 16th (Goedhart and Thissen, 2013). The variables were described as semen volume, sperm concentrations and individual sperm motility; while the bulls considered as a random effect; and the environmental factors of age (5 levels: 30-42, 43-54, 55-68, 69-80 and 81-92 month), season (4 levels: January-March, April-June, July-September and October-December), collection intervals (2 levels: 3 and 4 days interval) and ejaculation frequency (2 levels: ejaculation I and II) described as a fixed effect.

The repeatability estimation of each trait was estimated by formula bellow (Comadran et al., 2011).
 
r = (s2 bulls) / (s2 bulls + s2 residual) ……......….. (1)
 
The value of s2 bulls was obtained from antilog of estimate “l bulls” and s2 residual was antilog of estimate “j” were obtained from HGLM.
Semen evaluation
 
The coefficient of variability from the ejaculate volume, sperm concentration and individual motility from the semen collections during 2012-2014 are presenting in Table 1. The semen quality of Madura bulls was not quite different than reported earlier in, Bos indicus (Brito et al., 2002; Ahmad et al., 2011), Bos taurus (Mathevon et al., 1998a; href="#mathevon_1998b">Mathevon et al., 1998b; Fuerst-Waltl et al., 2006; Boujenane and Boussaq, 2013) and crossbred (Shaha et al., 2008).

Table 1: Mean predictions from HGLM of the effects of environmental factors (Mean±SE) to the semen volume, sperm concentration and individual sperm motility of Madura bulls.


 
The effect of environmental factor
Age of bull
 
The age of bulls affected all semen variables (P <0.05). Semen volumes were increased with age. On the contrary, sperm concentrations tend to decrease after the age of 54 months while sperm individual motility decreased after age 42 month and remains stable at the age of 54 - 92 months (Table 1). These results on Madura bulls are in accordance with those reported earlier on Bos taurus (Mathevon et al., 1998a; Fuerst-Waltl et al., 2006; Boujenane and Boussaq, 2013) and Bos indicus (Brito et al., 2002; Ahmad et al., 2011). However, some reports suggested that the concentration of spermatozoa was not significantly influenced by age (Mathevon et al., 1998a; Brito et al., 2002; Snoj et al., 2013). The present report on sperm individual motility were also in agreement to those reported previously (Brito et al., 2002; Boujenane and Boussaq, 2013) but few studies reported that sperm individual motility was not affected by age (Fuerst-Waltl et al., 2006; Ahmad et al., 2011).

The quality and quantity of bull semen were determined by its testicular size (Brito et al., 2002; Siddiqui et al., 2008), furthermore, the semen quality was determined by the number of Sertoli cells per testis (Moura et al., 2011; Rajak et al., 2014). The testicular growth pattern was both linear and quadratic against age and reaching a peak at the age of 40-50 months (Torres-Junior and Henry, 2005), therefore the quality and quantity of semen would be changed following the bull age. Moreover, a decrease in semen quality would be occur at different ages in different breeds (Snoj et al., 2013).
 
Season
 
The sperm concentration in this study was affected by Season (P<0.001). The sperm concentrations were generally higher during the wet season (October-March), while the maximum sperm concentrations were obtained at the peak to the end of the rainy season (January-March; Table 1). Meanwhile, the pattern effect of season was not clear against the quality of the semen and might result from environmental temperature, photoperiod, air humidity, feed availability and housing (Mathevon et al., 1998b). Further research also reported that season has no significant effect on the semen quality of both Bos taurus and Bos indicus in the tropics (Brito et al., 2002). However, the present result was closer to the results reported for both Bos indicus and Bos taurus in South Asia climatic conditions (Fiaz et al., 2008; Bhakat et al., 2011; Tiwari et al., 2012; Bhakat et al., 2014). 
 
Semen collection interval
 
This study suggested that collection interval affected to both the semen volume (P <0.001) and the sperm concentrations (P<0.05). More semen volumes and sperm concentrations were obtained from 4 days interval compared to 3 days interval (Table 1). Some studies reported that better semen volume and sperm concentration would be achieved from the long interval of the semen collections (Mathevon et al., 1998a; Fuerst-Waltl et al., 2006; Boujenane and Boussaq, 2013). The collection interval had no effect on the individual motility of spermatozoa as shown in this study (Fuerst-Waltl et al., 2006).

The reasons of this finding were from the daily production of spermatozoa that accumulate in the epididymis. The daily spermatozoa productions in bull were estimated 2 x 109, undergo the maturation when entering the cauda epididymis and accommodated in the epididymis as a reservoir if not to be ejaculated (Franson et al., 2009). The spermatozoa populations in the epididymis reached 55% of the total spermatozoa produced. Moreover, un-ejaculated spermatozoa could be survived for several weeks in the epididymis (Jones, 1999; Jones, 2004). These conditions can explain the differences in sperm concentration and semen volume associated with semen collection intervals.
 
Frequency of ejaculation:
 
The result obtained in this study indicated that all variable tested were affected by the frequency of ejaculations per day (P<0.001). The first ejaculation resulted in better semen volume and sperm concentration compared to second ejaculation (Table 1). These results are in agreement with the results previously reported by Fuerst-Waltl et al., (2006), Boujenane and Boussaq, (2013) but the best motility obtained on second ejaculation contrary.

The semen volume was derived from the seminal vesicle, epididymis and other sources. However, the epididymis only contributes a half in the second ejaculation (Seidel and Foote, 1970). Since the ejaculated spermatozoa only derived from the epididymis as a reservoir, by the successive ejaculation the number of the sperm will be reduced; resulted in the decreasing semen volume and sperm concentration respectively (Jones, 1999).
 
Repeatability
 
The repeatability estimates semen volume, sperm concentration and individual motility were 0.376, 0.445 and 0.576 respectively (Table 2). These results were not much different from those reported for Bos taurus in the temperate zone (Taylor and Everett, 1985; Mathevon et al., 1998a; Mathevon et al., 1998b; Boujenane and Boussaq, 2013).

Table 2: Semen traits, ó2 bull, ó2 residual and repeatability estimation of the Madura bulls semen production and quality.



Adaptability of the bulls to their environment was the important individual trait on semen production (Haque et al., 2001). These results indicated that the Madura bull has a good adaptation and reproductive potential in a local environment.

This study showed that the diversity of semen production occurred in Madura bulls due to the influence of genetic factors and environmental factors. The Madura bulls had a moderate high repeatability of the semen volume, sperm concentration and individual motility which were not too different in general with the other cattle breeds reported. This result indicated that Madura bulls as the indigenous breed had a good reproductive potency for the semen productions under the local environment.
The author expressed his gratitude to the Director of BBIB Singosari and related staff for providing data to this study.

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