CANONICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS OF BODY MEASUREMENTS AND CARCASS TRAITS OF CROSS BRED RABBIT POPULATION

In this study, canonical correlation analysis was applied to estimate the relationship between body measurements and carcass traits of 28 male cross bred rabbits of about 12 weeks of age, reared under semi intensive system. Four body measurements, pre-slaughter weight (PSW) , body length (BL), chest circumference (CC), and ear length (EL) as predictor variable while dressing percentage ( DP) , hot carcass weight (HCW) and cold carcass weight (CCW) as criterion variables. Pre-slaughter weight and body length had significant (P<0.001) simple correlation coefficients with the carcass traits except for dressing percentage. The three canonical variate pairs ranged between .99 to .42 and only the first pair was significant (P<0.001). From the analysis pre-slaughter weight and body length can be regarded as the main factors as live measurement traits, while dressing percentage did not have pronounced effect on the emerged criterion variables.