Indian Journal of Animal Research

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Full Research Article

Principal Component Analysis of Morphometric Traits of Tripura Desi Cattle

Surita Majumder1,*, Deepak Kumar Chaurasia2, Ritu Gupta3, Tanay Ghosh4, Santosh Kumar Sahu5, Lipismita Samal6, Manas Ranjan Senapati6, T.C. Tolenkhomba7
1Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding,I.V.Sc and A.H. Siksha 'O' Anusandhan Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
2Department of Veterinary Gynaecology and Obstetrics Siksha 'O' Anusandhan Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
3Department of Veterinary Medicine, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
4Department of Animal Nutrition, College of Veterinary Science, Khanapara, Assam Agricultural University, Assam Agricultural University, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
5Department of Veterinary Anatomy and Histology, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
6Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar-751 030, Odisha, India.
7College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Central Agricultural University, Aizawl-796 014, Mizoram, India.

ABSTRACT

Background: In 234 cows of Tripura desi cattle from three districts, 18 different biometric traits were measured and analyzed by PCA to explain body conformation. These traits included body length, height at withers, heart girth, paunch girth etc. The native cattle in Tripura are of a smaller breed, according to the average of these several traits. 

 
Methods: Six factors that accounted for roughly 75.67% of the variation overall were found using factor analysis with promax rotation. Explaining 26.07% of the total variation, factor 1 characterized the overall body structure. The measurements of tail length, shank length, heart girth, paunch girth, circumference of horn and horn length were significantly positive with high loadings.

Result: The outcome indicates that a significant decrease in the number of biometric parameters required to record in order to explain body conformation could lead to the application of principal component analysis (PCA) in breeding programmes. As a result, the study will support conservation efforts and the stabilization of this non-descript breed of cow.

 

INTRODUCTION

Body measurements provide an indication of body conformation, they have been used to signify breed, origin, relationship, or size and shape of an individual. However, when the recorded traits are connected, principal component analysis (PCA) can provide a better explanation of the correlations between biometric traits. Tripura’s native cattle are still regarded as non-descript cattle in the nation. Thus, the goal of the current study is to investigate the different body measurements, the correlations between them and the development of latent or unobservable factors in order to determine which of these measures best captures the body conformation of cows from Tripura’s desi cattle. The annual income of the farmers was around 69333.33 rupees (Majumder et al., 2023).
 
 

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Data collection
 
18 distinct biometric traits were taken from 234 native Tripura cows (3 years of age and older) in three regions viz. South, North and West Tripura with heavy concentration of these cows (Fig 1). The authors are thankful to AGB Department, C.V. Sc. and A.H., Selesih, Central Agricultural University for conducting the study during 2018-2021. Almost all the biometric traits were recorded in the present study with standard procedure and data, thus obtained were put to statistical analysis (SPSS, 2001).

Fig 1: A cow of Tripura desi cattle.


 
 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Morphometric traits
 
Most of the cattle are small in size in Tripura where 72.46% was having medium body size for gangatiri cattle (Kumar et al., 2017) and Hill cattle were small in size with strong legs which make them adaptable for hilly areas of Uttarakhand (Patoo et al., 2015). The average body length (BL), height at withers (HW), heart girth (HG), paunch girth (PG), length of arm (AL), elbow length (ElL), foreshank length (FSL), thigh length (THL), hindshank length (HSL), pes length (PesL), tail length (TL), switch length (SL), ear length (EL), head length (HDL), eye to eye space (EES), circumference of horn (HOC), space between the horns (SBHO) and horn length (HL) in adult female cattle were 85.39±1.71 cm, 87.86±1.71 cm, 112.80±2.86 cm, 112.02±2.91 cm, 26.35±1.03 cm, 39.76±1.24 cm, 27.29±0.50 cm, 39.24±1.32 cm, 35.16±0.59 cm, 39.67±0.43 cm, 47.33±1.34 cm, 17.16±1.00 cm, 15.96±0.40 cm, 33.35±0.86 cm, 11.63±0.30 cm, 7.23±0.75 cm, 11.04±0.46 cm and 8.73±0.89 cm, respectively (Table 1). In the age group of above 3 years, females exhibited lower values than the males for most of the biometric traits in local cattle of Tripura. The average values of BL, HW, HG and PG were significantly lower in females than the males. It was also observed that all the morphometric traits were lower in females than males.

Table 1: Mean±SE (N = 234) of various biometric traits of Tripura desi cattle.


 
The village had no significant effect similar with Red Kandhari cattle (Das et al., 2018). The non-significant district effect on all traits under study may conclude the stabilized population of this breed in the breeding tract. Tripura’s native cows having short, horizontally oriented ears and a long tail that resemble Sikkim’s Siri cattle, according to the morphometric features seen in this study (Phanchung and Roden, 1996).
 
Pundir et al., (2007) documented that the average BL, HW, HG and PG were reported to be 123, 119, 162, 182 cm respectively in cows of Red Sindhi cattle breed which was higher than the cows of Tripura local cattle. The studies conducted on cows of Mizoram local cattle population (Anal, 2015) revealed that the overall average of length of body, height at wither, length of head, chest girth, paunch girth, length of ear and circumference of horns  were higher than the Tripura local cows of local cattle. The average height at wither, body length and heart girth (121.62±0.47, 155.88±0.79 and 171.73±0.90 cm, respectively) in female Vrindavani cattle of above 3 years of age (Singh et al., 2011) were reported to be higher than the present findings for each trait. 
 
In phenotypic characterization of Bachaur breed of cattle, Singh et al., (2010) reported that the average length of horn, length of ear, length of face, heart girth, body length, height at withers and length of tail of adult females were 10.13±0.21, 18.73±0.11, 39.02±0.12, 140.22±1.99, 109.79±1.06, 110.41±0.84 and 72.90±0.31 cm respectively which was higher than the findings in the cows of Tripura local cattle.
 
Factor analysis
 
The computed Anti-image correlations revealed low partial correlations, suggesting the presence of real factors in the data. Component number with eigen values of cows have shown in scree plot (Fig 2). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sample adequacy was 0.369 in current study. The results in the present study is in accordance with Pundir et al. (2011),  however higher values of sampling adequacy was reported in Kankrej cows.

Fig 2: Component number with eigen values of cows in scree plot.


 
Table 2 displays the estimated factor loading derived from factor analysis, as well as the eigen values and variation explained by each factor. Seventy-six percent (75.673%)  of the variance was explained by six factors that were retrieved and had eigen values larger than one. Factor 1 described the general body conformation and explained 21.85% of total variation in case of Tripura bull (Majumdar et al., 2021).

Table 2: Total variance explained by different factors in Tripura desi cattle.


 
However, by examining 14 morphometric features of White Fulani cattle, Yakubu et al. (2009) extracted two factors in the age group of 2.5 to 3.6 years explaining 86.47% of the overall variation. Out of all measures used in the study, the first factor explained 26.07% of the difference. In cows the first factor was represented by significant high positive loading of HW (0.716), HG (0.668), PG (0.648), FSL (0.611), TL (0.638), HOC (0.650) and HL (0.610). This factor seems to be describing the overall size of the local cattle cows, or the body type of the female cattle. According to Pundir et al. (2011), the first component accounted for 38.89% of the variation in Kankrej cows.
 
The second factor, which had a relatively greater loading for HG in Tripura female cattle, explained 14.02 per cent of the total variability. The third factor , which had a somewhat greater loading for PG characteristics, explained 12.46% of the overall variability. The fourth factor, which had a significant loading of shank length, explained 9.80% of the variation overall. The sixth component, which had high loading for both HL and HOC, accounted for 6.31% of the total variation, whereas the fifth factor, which had high loading for tail length, accounted for 7.02%. Tolenkhomba et al. (2012) extracted 7 factors with eigen value more than 1 in local cows of Manipur.
 
For all of the various biometric parameters under investigation, the estimated communality ranged from 0.879 (HG) to 0.568 (TL), while the unique factors varied from 0.121 to 0.432 (Table 3). Sadek et al. (2006) reported range of 0.42 to 0.87 and Yakubu et al. (2009) found higher estimates of communality, ranging from 0.79 to 0.93. 

Table 3: Communalities of different morphometric traits in Tripura desi cattle.

CONCLUSION

The source of shared variability to explain body conformation in Tripura cows is determined by the six extracted factors. The first component successfully explains the typical body conformation of Tripura cows. The findings imply that the number of biometric parameters required to record in order to explain body conformation could be drastically reduced when using principal component analysis (PCA) in breeding programmes.
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors are thankful to AGB Department, C.V. Sc. and A.H., Selesih, Central Agricultural University for conducting the  study.
 
 

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

There is no conflict of interest.
 

REFERENCES


  1. Anal, H.B.W. (2015). Studies on the phenotypic characterization of local cattle (Bos indicus) of Mizoram,  M.V.Sc. Thesis. Submitted to Central Agricultural University, Mizoram.

  2. Das, S., Siddiqui, M.F., Ingle, V.S. and Mishra, G. (2018). Physical and morphometric characterization of young Red Kandhari cattle in their breeding tract. Indian Journal of Animal Research. 52(8): 1248-1252

  3. Kumar, B.B., Kumar, P.V., Prakash, Y.S., Saroj, Singh, Prity. (2017). Physical and morphometric characteristics of Gangatiri cattle. Indian Journal of Animal Research. 51: 1101-1104.

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  12. Singh, R.R., Dutt, T., Kumar, A., Tomar, A.K.S. and Singh, M. (2011). On-farm characterization of Vrindavani cattle in India. Indian Journal of Animal Sciences. 81(3): 267-271.

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