Phenotypic Characterization of Indigenous Sheep Breeds in Saudi Arabia

Saudi’s farm animal genetic resources have a particular role to play in managing the rural environment and assisting in maintaining wild biological diversity. Our indigenous livestock breeds are of great economic, social and cultural importance. The presence of livestock is a very positive feature for many who live in, work in or visit the countryside and livestock farming is frequently a core activity on which whole communities depend. The Kingdom has a rich and diverse population of livestock breeds sheep, goats, poultry, horses & Camel most of it are at risk. The conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture is a widely supported international objective contributing to efforts to eliminate global poverty and achieve world food security. The data of the present study were collected form Noemi, Najdi and Hari breeds raised in Najd (96, 108, and 90 animals, respectively) Qassim region. Eight body measurements were studied, Wither heights (WH), Rum heights (RH), Body length (BL), Head length (HL), Heart girth (HG), Muzzle diameter (MD), Cannon circumference (CC) and Cannon length (CL). Noemi is taking the second size breed of the sheep breeds in Saudi Arabia. Hari is the smallest breed of sheep breeds in Saudi Arabia and it is the main breed in Hejaz and Asir regions which belong to the sheep with coarse hair and thick tail strain. The results of the present study on these breeds showed that Najdi breed has the biggest sizes in all body measurements 10.9% and 11.4% bigger than Noemi and Hari, Approximate respectively. By the other way in comparing Noemi’s breed with Hari breed, Noemi having the biggest sizes (10.5% Approximate) in all body measurements than Hari. Three categories of ages were presents in this study, eight, eighteen and forty-eight months. The first category eight months showed the smallest size in all body measurements by 11.2% in compare with eighteen months. No big differences were showed among eighteen and forty-eight months the different around 2% in favor of forty-eight category. In addition, the effect of sex was significant, male always have biggest body measurements in compare with female. The results showed that male have around 10.9% more in all studied measurements more than female. All the fixed effect (effect of: Age, Breed and Sex) are significant on all body measurements traits expect Cannon circumference (CC) trait. The correlations coefficients among all studied traits were moderate to high and highly significant. The highest correlation coefficient was found between RH and WH traits (0.872), and the lowest one was found between CC and HG traits (0.214).


Introduction
Many researchers give an attention to the body measurements of sheep as good indicators of growths. Body measurements are necessary data sources in terms of reflecting the breed standards (Riva et al., 2004) and are important in giving information about the morphological structure and development ability of the animals. Body measurements differ according to the factors such as breed, gender, yield type and age (Shirzeyli et al., 2013).
Most of the studies reported highly significant correlations between linear body measurements and live body weight (Otoikhian et al., 2008;Moneim et al., 2009). Body measurements have also been used to differentiate and identify the Saudia local breed as a phenotypic characterization (Suparyanto et al., 1999;Mansjoer et al., 2007). The phenotypic characterization in sheep can be measured through body size, which can be used for visual identification and to determine the idea growth of the animal (Ghahri et al., 2019;Widi et al., 2016). Serval body measurements such as height at withers (WH), body length (BL), heart girth (HG), have a correlation and can be used to predict body weight and describe the performance of sheep (Iqbal et al., 2019). Body measurements were easy to produce than body weights, which need weighting, scale while surveying farms. Classify genetic sources of sheep and goats and characterize these breeds accurately and maintain and increase the numbers of good performances animals knowing the different production patterns in the Kingdom and the distribution of species in the regions and cities and different economic production systems This will enable us to increase this important agricultural production sector in the Kingdom.
To date, there is no specific scientific description known to our local breeds as is known to all other breeds around the world. The aims of this study are to determine of phenotypic characteristics in local breeds of sheep Noemi, Najdi and Hari breeds.

Animals
A total of 1992 records from 294 animals (Table 1) of three different local breeds: 96 Noemi, 108 Najdi and 90 Hari for male and female was used in the current study, data were collected from College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine experimental station and some private farms in Qassim region. Body measurements had taken in a standing position of the sheep. Eight characters of body measurements were taken by using a metric tape and cattle height hip measuring stick.

Statistical Analysis
SAS software Ver. 9.0 (SAS, 1999) was used for analysis of variance of quantitative traits. Estimation the least square mean for different measurements traits and analysis of variance for three-fixed effect of sex, age and breed. The modal used as: where, μ: is the overall mean; S: is the fixed effect of the sex where i = 2; A: is the fixed effect of the age where j = 3; B: is the fixed effect of the breed where m = 3; S·A: is the interaction between sex and age where ij = 6; S·Bim: is the interaction between sex and breed where im = 6; A·Bjm: is the interaction between age and breed where jm = 9; S·A·Bijm: is the 3 terms of interaction among age, breed and sex where um = 18; eijmk = random error.

Analysis of Variance of Studied Body Measurements Traits
All the main fixed effects are shown in Table 2. All the main fixed (Breed, Sex and Age) and two ways interactions effects were significant on WH, RH, BL, HL, HG, and MD. Cannon circumference (CC) trait just jas.ccsenet.org Vol. 15, No. 8;2023 showed significant breed effect. Cannon length traits showed significant effect for all fixed effect except interaction between sex and both breed and age.

Journal of Agricultural Science
All 3-way interaction between studied fixed effects are not significant except on Body length (BL) and Heart girth (HG) traits.
These results agree with that found by Yilmaz et al., (2012) whose reported significant effect of age on wither height, rump heights, body length and heart girth. Cam et al., (2010) also reported significant effect of sex on on RH. Interaction between Sex and on Wither heights was significant which was studied by Elsaid and Elnahas (2019). Note. Wither heights (WH), Rum heights (RH), Body length (BL), Head length (HL), Heart girth (HG), Muzzle diameter (MD), Cannon circumference (CC) and Cannon length (CL).

Least Square of the Body Measurements in Different Breeds
Analysis of variance of the studied traits showed high significant differences as shown in Table 3. Najdi breed showed the highest mean for the most studied traits 82.2, 82.2, 93.4, 32.9, 98.9, 32.7, 13 and 32.4 cm for WH, RH, BL, HL, HG, MD, CC and CL traits, respectively. The Noemi breed sorted as a second breed by means of traits.
By the other way, Hari breed had the lowest values for most of studied traits (71.2, 73.8, 29.2, 90.9, 27.2 and 11.1 cm for WH, RH, BL, HG and CC traits, respectively) with no differences between it and Noemi's breed in the rest studied traits (29.5, 29.7 and 29.6 for HL, MD and CL traits, respectively). The differences noticeable in body measurements in comparable study make sense due to different in genetic breeding for body conformation.
While, the differences between body measurements within breed under studied traits had a same different ratio trend with other different breeds in literature review.

Mean of the Body Measurements in Different Ages
The constant estimate of age is shown in Table 4. The wide skip can be seen clearly between age 8 months to 48 months in all traits that had been studied in this studied; the only reason of this huge different between these ages due to the normality of genetic, for example, Ibrahim et al. (2020) have studied mean of the body measurements in different ages (between 8-48 months) and they found that in (WH, BL and HG) were 3.96, 3 and 7.92, respectively. There is no big different between age of 18 months and age 48 months all the same constant and that can be explained by the phases of growing up of this animal.

Least Square of the Body Measurements in Different Sex
The least square means for sex estimated are shown in table 5. The constants effect of sex was 7.4, 4.9, 7.6, 2.5, 10.4, 3.1, 1, 1.5 in mean of WH, RH, BL, HL, HG, MD, CC and CL, respectively. The trend of these differences was similar to what reported by Ibrahim et al., (2020) especially in (WH, BL, HG) which their constants effect was 8.06, 9.33 and 3.51, respectively. In general, the body measurements in male are consistently more than female due to the hormonal effects. Note. Wither heights (WH), Rum heights (RH), Body length (BL), Head length (HL), Heart girth (HG), Muzzle diameter (MD), Cannon circumference (CC) and Cannon length (CL). Table 6, showed the correlation coefficients between the eight studied traits. As shown in table, the highest value of the correlation coefficient was found between wither heights and rum heights (0.872, p ≤ 0.001). By the other way, the lowest value of the correlation coefficient was found between heart girth and cannon circumference (0.214, p ≤ 0.001). In general, the positive moderate to high correlations coefficients between relative traits are so important in selection program meaning that improve one trait improve the others.

Phenotypic Correlations
In The moderate to high favorable coefficients of correlation between studied traits led us to say that the genetic improvements are at the same time can be made simply to improve one trait and we can gain the improvements in the other traits. Wither heights (WH), Rum heights (RH), Body length (BL), Head length (HL), Heart girth (HG), Muzzle diameter (MD), Cannon circumference (CC) and Cannon length (CL).

Conclusion
Choose animal for one trait implies that other traits have no important value which is not. Most smallholders look after more than one trait usually contributed to total knowledge of that animal. In Saudi Arabia there were three main native breeds Noemi, Najdi and Hari. These breeds have no studies on restrictive shapes (morphological characteristic) and productions which cause them not promoted to be breeds. This study was the regular first step to construct the breed. We concluded from the morphological traits that Al-Najdi is following hair breed with thick tail more spread breed than others. Al-Haria the smallest breed of sheep breeds in Saudi Arabia and it is the main breed in Hejaz and Asir regions which belong to the sheep with coarse hair and thick tail strain while Al-Noemi was the middle size between the other with brown head and legs, the body covered by wool and they have thick tail. All the main fixed effect under study had a significant p < 0.01 on measurement traits, RH, BL, HL, HG, MD and CL. Some terminal two ways interaction had significant effect on traits WH, RH, BLand HG. While, few three terminal interaction had significant effect on traits WH, BL and HG. The phenotypic and genetic correlation also required for selection for more than one trait and also needed to know the expected response in related traits. All the terms of phenotypic correlation between 28 pairs of traits were estimated and showed highly significant. The largest value of correlations items sorted by ascending were 0.872