Discriminate analysis of biometric traits of different indigenous cattle populations of Uttarakhand state of India

An attempt has been made to differentiate different cattle populations from different districts of Uttarakhand state based on biometric traits, using canonical discriminant analysis to see whether they are similar or distinct as there was larger proportion (75%) of indigenous un described cattle. Data consisted of eight different biometric traits on 300 indigenous cows from Almora, Pithoragarh, Rudarpryag, Chamoli and Uttarkashi districts. All the morphometric traits under study differ significantly in these populations except heart girth. The stepwise discriminant analysis showed that ear length, body length, horn length, height at withers, face length, heart girth and paunch girth were the most discriminating traits among these cattle populations. The pair wise Mahalanobis distancess was maximum in cows of Rudarpryag and Uttarkashi districts (8.34645) and minimum in Rudarpryag and Chamoli districts (1.24742). Only 47.32% of Almora cows, 67.05% of Pithoragarh cows, 45.28% of Rudarpryag cows, 39.62% of Chamoli cows and 50% of Uttarkashi cows were classified correctly into their source population by cross validation method which revealed that they are not distinct. High values of overall error 48.50% also revealed similar observations.