Principal component analysis of morpho-biometric traits in Indigenous Aseel chicken

Abstract

Study was conducted to explore the relationship among morpho-biometric measurements in Aseel using Principal component analysis with the idea of identifying those components that explain the maximum variation. Two principal components were extracted from morpho-biometric traits in Aseel with eigen values of 11.041 for the first principal component (PC1), 1.197 for the second principal component (PC2) which explained 72% of the total variance present in the sixteen original variables.PC1 had high loadings (correlations between the components and the variables) on comb length (0.919), body weight (0.900) and shank girth (0.900). PC2 loaded heavily on beak length (0.607).The correlation coefficient amongst the various measurement traits were positive and high, all body measurements had high correlation with 40week body weight in Aseel breed.