Abstract
Body weight and 16 body measurements were utilized to discriminate between 188 animals randomly selected from three Saudi goat types, namely Ardi, Line1 and Line2. A size-free canonical discriminant analysis was conducted. Results indicated that Ardi breed is separated from the other two lines. The Mahalanobis distance of 0.55 was obtained between Line1 and Line2, while the corresponding distances between Ardi and each of Line1 and Line2 were 25.03 and 21.45, respectively. These values indicate that Line1 and Line2 are more closely related to each other than the relation between Ardi and each of both, which they are far apart. The three distances were significantly (P<0.01) different from each other. The cross-validation procedure assigned 100% of Ardi animals into their genetic group, while percentages of animals assigned in Line1 and line2 were 86.10 and 42.55, respectively. The size-free canonical approach is proved useful and informative in differentiating between the three breeds. Application of selective breeding to genetic improvement would benefit from the detected phenotypic differentiation.