GENETIC TREND FOR MILK PRODUCTION AND LONGEVITY TRAITS OF EGYPTIAN BUFFALO

Data used in this study comprised 1792 records for 1126 buffalo female born from 1980 to 2013, daughters of 101 sires and 896 dams from four buffalo herds (El-Nattafe el gadid, El-Nattafe el kadim, Mahalet mousa and El-gmeza) that belong to the Animal Production Research Institute (APRI), Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Egypt. The objective was estimate the heritability and genetic trend of some milk production and longevity traits of Egyptian buffaloes that we know precisely which traits can be improved using genetic improvement. The studied traits were milk production traits (total milk yield, 305days milk yield and lactation period) and longevity traits (total milk yield during the productive life, productive life and number of lactations). The least squares means of the milk production traits were 1176.53, 1172.61 kg and 202 days of the total milk yield, 305-days milk yield and lactation period, respectively. The least squares means of longevity traits were 6905.04 kg, 952 days and 5.6 lactation of total milk yield during productive life, productive life and number of lactations, respectively. The heritability estimates for the milk production traits were 0.498 of the total milk yield, 0.492 of 305-days milk yield and 0.189 for lactation period. The heritability estimates for longevity traits were 0.497 of total milk yield during productive life, 0.498 of productive life and 0.069 of number of lactations. The estimated breeding values for all traits varied widely. The genetic trends of animal and dam breeding values were significant for all studied. This confirms that the genetic improvement of these traits leads to increased milk production.