AbstractAnimal populations are characterized by biometric and morphological traits. Morphometrics are vital for identifying breeds and understanding unknown populations. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a critical statistical tool for analyzing livestock morphology. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to study the morphological structure of the Kashir goat. Accordingly, the morphological data on 187 adult goats were collected for the year 2019. The traits considered were face length (FL), ear length (EL), ear width (EW), body length (BL), chest girth (CG), paunch girth (PG), tail length (TL), height at wither (HW), and body weight (BW). The averages were of 35.63±1.01 kg, 22.5±0.18 cm, 13.32±0.35 cm, 9.04±0.96 cm, 56.1±0.44 cm, 55.65±0.32 cm, 66.13±0.65 cm, 69.84±0.76 cm, and 13.06±0.15 cm for BW, FL, EL, EW, CG, PG, HW, BL, and TL, respectively. BW had a strong positive correlation with CG and BL, whereas moderate correlations with WH and PG. Indicating that taller, fatter, and longer animals had higher body weights. Similarly, positive and moderate to high (>0.25) correlations were observed between CG and BL, CG and WH, BL and WH, and WH and PG. EL, EW, TL, and FL had mostly low and negative correlations with other traits and between them. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test yielded a measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) of 0.759 with a significant (P<0.01) Bartlett's test of sphericity. In the present study, communalities ranged from 0.214 (EL) to 0.824 (CG), indicating the proportion of variance explained by each variable. Principal Component Analysis extracted three components (PC1, PC2, and PC3) for Kashir goats, following varimax rotation. These components collectively explained 61.723% of the total variance. In conclusion, the results of the Principal Component Analysis revealed that a few key morphological traits, particularly chest girth, body length, and height at withers (WH), play a key role in defining the body conformation of Kashir goats. This provides a useful basis for breed characterization and selection strategies.
Rather et al. (Wed,) studied this question.