Popis: |
Data were consisted of the ten body measurements (withers height, rump height, body length, chest depth, chest width, rump width, rump length, thurls width, hipbone width and chest girth) of 642 steers (Korean cattle), which was entered in the National Beef Quality Contest hosted by the Korea Animal Improvement Association from 1997 to 2001. A principal components analysis was used to classify the body types of the steers, and estimate the correlations between carcass traits and principal components for the body measurements of the first, second, third and fourth period, respectively. The first principal component of body measurements at the first, second, third and fourth period accounted for 76.0%, 83.0%, 72.7% and 57.4% of the total variance, respectively. The sum of first, second and third principal component at each period accounted for 86.69%, 90.49%, 84.62% and 77.26% of the total variance, respectively. At each period, all the first principal component of the body measurements were positive and it generally showed large framed body shape. The size of body was influenced mostly by chest depth(0.3280.339) and rump length(0.3250.341). The second, third and fourth principal component at the each period were various. There were positive correlations between principal components index of each period and carcass traits such as carcass weight(0.5390.755), average daily gain(0.2560.564), backfat thickness(0.2270.280), and eye muscle area(0.1870.344). The correlation with yield grade index(-0.246-0.110), however, was negative. The correlation with marbling score(0.0660.099) was low or statistically insignificant. According to principal component indexes of the second, third, and fourth components, the correlations with the carcass traits were various. There were no large differences between the correlations of the single body measurement trait with the carcass traits and the correlations of the first principal component indexes with the carcass traits. |