In vitro Maturation and Fertilization of Buffalo Oocytes Cultured in Media Supplemented with Bovine Serum Albumin

The aim of this study was to determine the quality of cumulus-oocyte-complexes (COCs) and the effects of bovine serum albumin (BSA) supplementation on in vitro maturation and fertilization rate of buffalo oo-cytes. COCs were collected from slaughterhouse buffalo ovaries by aspiration method. Only normal grades COCs were matured for 48 hours in TCM-199 media. Two groups were created: one for the maturation medium supplemented with 5% of BSA, the other without supplementation (control). Matured oocyte fertil-ized with capacitated frozen-thawed semen in Brackett and Oliphant (BO) medium for 5 hours, in an incu-bator at 38.5 °C with 5% CO2 under humidified air. A significantly higher number of normal quality COCs per ovary (P < 0.05) were obtained from ovaries devoid of corpus luteum (CL) compared to ovaries having CL (1.84 vs. 0.81) respectively. The percentage of oocytes reaching Metaphase-II (M-II) stages was 58.07±2.08 and 68.10±0.75% for control and 5% level of BSA respectively. The fertility level was assessed by pronuclei formation: the normal fertilization rate (2PN) obtained was 19.63±3.11 and 29.52±1.98% for control and BSA supplementation respectively. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed in matura-tion (M-II) and fertilization (2PN) rate of buffalo oocyte by adding 5% level of BSA supplementation in culture media. Thus, data gathered in this study showed that 5% BSA supplementation in both maturation and fertilization media can be used for enhance the maturation and fertilization rate of buffalo oocytes, as well as to improve the grade of collected buffalo COCs.