Principal Component Analysis of Morphological Traits of Donkeys in Northwest Nigeria

Abstract

Seven hundred (700) donkeys were sampled in this study that was aimed at generating new latent factors from morphological traits of donkeys in North West Nigeria. Data were collected on hair type, coat colour, skin type, coat colour pattern, tail shape, eye colour and head profile using visual observations of the donkeys. The data were subjected to principal component analysis through dimension reduction functions with varimax rotation using IBM^® SPSS^®. Tail shape (0.51), head profile (0.72) and hair type (0.81) were the traits that contributed significantly to the component in PC1; coat colour (0.81) and coat colour pattern (0.72) in PC2 while eye colour (0.89) was the only trait that loaded in PC3. Tail shape, head profile and hair type (PC1) accounted for 30.1% of the total variation of morphological traits of donkeys in North West Nigeria. Any of these three traits should be used to further classify the donkey populations in North West Nigeria.