Quality of pashmina from chegu goats maintained at variable altitudes of breeding tract in Himachal Pradesh

The altitude-specific quality of pashmina fibre obtained from the breeding tract of Chegu goats reared under farmers management in Himachal Pradesh was studied. 25 random samples of pashmina obtained from different locations at variable altitudes across the breeding tract were used in the quality analysis. The mean values of fibre length, fibre diameter and % clean fibres based on all the samples drawn at random was estimated to be 2.71 ± 0.13 cm (1.95–4.40 cms), 13.95 ± 0.43 μ (8.20–20.90 μ) and 96.33 ± 0.30% (91.50–99.00%), respectively. The effect of altitude and agro-ecological situation was observed to be highly significant on fibre diameter indicating improvement in fibre diameter with increasing altitude and shift towards more frigid, arid and temperate climatic conditions of the habitat. The effect of altitude and agro-ecological conditions was, however observed to be statistically non-significant on other fibre quality parameters like fibre length and per cent proportion of the clean and medullated fibres.