Caracterização fenotípica de caprinos da raça Canindé no Nordeste do Brasil

Abstract

Goat breed Canindé is characterized as highly adapted animals, a condition acquired due to natural and artificial selection process they have undergone over the century. But the use of breeding exotic breeds in crossing as an alternative for modernization of the production system has become a common practice in recent decades in goats in northeastern Brazil. This fact has contributed to loss of the racial characteristics of native herds, endangering this genetic resource endowed with great variability and historic and social importance. Characterization is an important tool in the conservation process of a breed at risk. The aims of this work is to phenotypically characterize goat breed Canindé, distributed in herds in northeastern Brazil through morphological and morphometric characters and use different techniques of multivariate analysis to assist in the process of breed characterization. The morphometric variables used were head longitude (HL), face longitude (FL), head width (HW), body length (BL), thoracic perimeter (TP), withers height (WH), sacral region height (SRH), rump width (RW), rump longitude (RL) cannon perimeter (CP), ear size (ES) and six zoometric indexes: Body Index (BI), Relative Body Index (RBI) Index for Relation of Chest Perimeter (IRCP), Cephalic Index (CI), Metacarpal-Thoracic Index (MTI), and Transverse-Pelvic Index (TPI). Morphological variables of genetic inheritance used were: presence or absence of horns, beard, earrings, extra nipples, short or long fur. For morphometric characterization and morphological traits were used data of 234 animals (29 males and 205 females) distributed in herds in the states of Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Bahia, northeastern Brazil. For multivariate analyzes, we sampled 150 adult females. Based on morphometric characteristics we observed differences between the herds evaluated in different states. The animals belonging to herds bred in the states of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte showed the most desirable characteristics for the goat breed Canindé. The morphometric indexes obtained allowed in classifying the animals as dolichocephalic, medium shape, with well-developed legs, chest, and skeleton and good capacity for meat production, having the morphologic pattern breed similar to other native Brazilian breeds and suitable for extensive breeding system. The evaluated animals showed horns, short fur, no earrings, with low rates of extra nipples; being that bearded animals can be observed only in some of the evaluated states. Analyzing factor, it was possible to verify that the variables HL, FL, WH, SRH and BL were those ones that retained the higher percentage of variation; being the most suitable for future studies on morphometric characterization of goat breed Canindé. The canonical analysis has highlighted the importance of morphological variables for phenotypic differentiation, being presence of fur, extra nipples, earring and beard the most important of them. By discriminant analysis, it was possible to classify individuals evaluated according to their locality. Correspondence analysis showed the form of dispersion and clustering of individuals assessed by the state. The study concluded that there is phenotypic diversity of phenotypes within the race in different states of the country, which can be used successfully in a program to conserve the breed.