Morphological characterisation of breeds of sheep: A discriminant analysis approach
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Date
2017-01-20
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Abstract
In this study the characterisation and separation or discrimination of three sheep
breeds (crosses, West African Dwarfs (WAD) and West African Long Legged
(WALL) based on their physical traits (morphological characterisation) was investigated
extensively with the application of discriminant analysis. The study's
main objective was speci cally based on developing a variable selection criterion
that can discriminate best among the three sheep breeds as well as obtain a reliable
mathematical function or equation (discriminant function) for provision of
maximum separation among the three known sheep breeds. Data from College of
Education, Mampong animal farms on various breeds of sheep (hybrid/crossed
breed, Sahell or WALL and Djallonke or WAD) were used. Factor Analysis
was employed as a variable selection criterion for selecting six sheep traits that
can discriminate best among the sheep breeds. Canonical discriminant function
was derived for the eight variable data set and was compared with the derived
Quadratic Discriminant Functions (QDF) using the six extracted sheep traits.
The six variable QDF distance classi er provided maximum separation after
cross validation than the 8-variable canonical discriminant functions. The derived
mathematical functions (QDFs) were able to provide maximum separation among
the three known sheep breeds with a correct classi cation rate of 0.86. The study
recommended the use of a Quadratic Discriminant Function for discrimination
and classi cation of breeds of animal since it gives more accurate results than
other classi ers such as Linear Discriminant Function.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Mathematics,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in
partial fufillment of the requirement for the degree
of Master of Philosophy in Mathematical Statistics, 2016