Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LXVIII, Issue 2
Written by Florinel BÎRCĂ, Horia GROSU
The aim of the present paper is the phenotypic characterization of the varieties of the Tsurcana sheep breed, for exterior and production characters, in order to answer the question of whether or not these herds represent different subpopulations of the same sheep breed. The study was conducted on a flock of 1165 Tsurcana sheep breed, within the DACIA Association located in several farms in the country, structured on four varieties: Oacheșă, Belă/Bălă, Brează, Bucălae, 7 exterior characters (height at withers, average width of chest, average length of rump, oblique length of trunk, chest depth, perimeter of the whistle) and 2 production characters (wool weight and average daily weight gain) were analysed. Simple population statistics (arithmetic mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variability) were used for phenotypic characterization. The results obtained on comparison pairs revealed, in most characters, very significant differences between the four varieties. To the extent that the experimental results will show that the four varieties are also significantly different from the genomic point of view, for the future the possibility of developing separate breeding programs for each variety will be considered.
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