| Summary: | Madura cattle are between the most important local cattle in Indonesia: they are probably a crossing of Bali (a domesticated form of the Banteng, Bos javanicus), Bos indicus and Bos taurus breeds. The uniformity of this hybrid was achieved after hundreds years of selection in the island of Madura. Madura cattle are embedded in many cultural aspects of local people. Two famous traditional festivals involving Madura cattle are Karapan (a bull racing) and Sonok (a cow/heifer beauty contest); animals from different areas are bred specifically for each event, and also the management practices are differently focused: as a result, there are visible phenotypic
differences between the Karapan and Sonok sub populations. The aim of this study was to prove scientifically the existing phenotypic variation between these two sub-populations. Phenotypic traits were collected from 38 and 86 cows used for Karapan and Sonok breeding respectively, obtained data were analyzed using “R” programme. T-test was used to analyze body measurements data and showed that Sonok is significantly larger than Karapan (p<.05) in all dimensions. Exterior traits like body color patterns, dewlap, hump or backline
were analized using v2 which also showed significant
differences (p<.05) between the two sub-populations.
Principal Component Analysis was used to visualize the
underlying pattern of body measurements data. We could see separate clusters between the Sonok and the Karapan where the first two PC explained 67% and 16% of the total variance. These results allow discriminating the Sonok from the Karapan by means of body measurements and exterior traits.
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