Damiano Altieri, Yuri Gombia, Tommaso Lanna, Donato Musone, Laura Onnis, Mariela Castrillo, Roberta Cimmino, Massimo Neri, Pasquale Rossi, Rossella Di Palo Type trait evolution of the Italian Mediterranean Buffalo: preliminary results of the last 15 year selection

The linear type trait evaluation for the Italian Mediterranean buffalo (IMB) was introduced by the Italian National Association of Buffalo Breeders (ANASB) at the beginning of the 2000s. The proposed chart contains 23 traits, and it has been used for the admission to the herd book of both buffalo cows and bulls. Despite this, the morphology was captured in the selective process only in 2018, with the new aggregate index IBMI which include udder and limbs and feet scores. The aim of this study was to evaluate the trend of type traits in the last 15 years when only productive selection and improved management system have been applied. For this purpose, the ANASB dataset containing type trait evalu-ations of the female buffalo carried out between 2006 and 2020 was used. The dataset accounted for animals born between 2004 and 2017 and scored at 2–6 years of age. Data were analysed (IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0.0.1/2019) with a model that included the birth year, the type of mating (born from artificial insemination (AI) with progeny tested bull or from natural services with farm bull), the age at the evaluation as the linear covariate, and the experts as a random effect. The analysis showed that morphology changed over time, but not always linearly for many traits. Because the change was significantly more marked for some traits in buffaloes born from AI, this indirect selection process could probably be attributed the improvement of both the man-agement system and the address of genetic selection toward milk yield for these traits. Some traits showed a positive trend for morphological traits, in agreement with the breeding objectives of the IMB selection process, but other traits presented changes in the opposite way, i.e. negative trends. The new aggregate IBMI index aimed at improving some of these traits, but the knowledge of indirect selection applied for type traits highlight important objective to be implemented in the future to optimize breeding goals in Italian Mediterranean buffaloes.