Individual variance component of fresh semen quality in Bali cattle (Bos javanicus) bull
Sigit Prastowo(1,*), Nuzul Widyas(1), Adi Ratriyanto(1), Myristica Sucedona Trisna Kusuma(1), Pipin Dharmawan(1), Indra Adie Setiawan(2), Aris Bachtiar(2)
1) Animal Science Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Sebelas Maret. Surakarta – Indonesia
*prastowo[at]staff.uns.ac.id
2) Artificial Insemination Center Singosari, Singosari, Malang, Indonesia
Abstract
Semen quality is an important factor influencing the success of a cattle breeding program. Efforts to continuously evaluate the semen quality parameter is needed. Indonesia has Bali cattle; it is indigenous, tropically adapted, robust, and has high fertility. Bali cattle need to be developed into meat producer by selecting the best bulls and disseminate their sperm through artificial insemination program. To obtain the desired improvement, one of the key is to ensure the semen quality. This study aimed to determine the factors affecting fresh semen quality of Bali bull. In total, 864 ejaculates were collected from nine bulls from January to October 2016. Semen was collected twice a week, followed with semen quality evaluation as semen volume (ml), sperm concentration (x106/ml), sperm motility (%), and pH. A linear model was built to obtain the significant fixed factor of season and/or age affecting sperm quality followed by mixed model procedure including individual bulls as random effect to estimate the variance components. The result showed that season didn-t give any effect (p>0.05) in all fresh semen quality observed, while there was a significant effect of age (p<0.05) on volume, sperm concentration and pH. There is no interaction (p>0.05) between season and age in this study. The variance component of individual bulls contributed 71.15, 67.92, 48.22, and 11.76% of the total variance of semen volume, sperm concentration, sperm motility, and pH respectively. This study shows that there is a wide variation of semen quality resulted due to the variation between individual of the Bali cattle bull, which mirroring the diverse of Bali cattle genetic. In bulls selection as semen source, careful selection and the application of genetic standard need to be concerned.
Keywords: semen quality, Bali cattle bull, individual variance component
Topic: General animal production and husbandries (ruminants and non-ruminants)