ESTIMATES OF MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF FLEECE AND VARIATION OF WOOL QUALITATIVE TRAITS ON DIFFERENT BODY REGIONS OF PALAS MEAT LINE SHEEP

The knowledge of the fleece morphologic structure and of the variation of the wool qualitative traits for hybrids and sheep population specialized for meat and milk production represents a necessity within selection activities in order to establish the body area of collecting wool samples representative for the whole fleece and also for elaboration of the wool classing and sorting norms. The study was made on the sheep effectives of the Palas Meat Line by determining the wool fineness, the absolute and relative length, the tensile strength, the extensibility and impurification degree on the wool samples randomly collected at shearing season on six body areas, calculating the statistic parameters and testing the statistic significance of the differences for each traits on body regions related to fleece average. The data thus obtained emphasized differences with statistical significances related to the ewes average wool diameter of24.85 microns, on the thighs areas (with 2.75 % (*) over the mean diameter), on the shoulder with 3.75% (**) under the mean value and related to the rams average wool diameter of25.67 microns, on the belly (with 2.59% * under the mean value) respective with 3.75% (*) on shoulder areas. The average tenacity of the wool fibers for the ewes of the Palas Meat Line was of 12.74 cN/tex, and for the rams of 13.72 cN /tex , the median area having over-average values and the neck, back and abdomen being inferior to it. The greater variability for all wool traits analyzed on the sheep body areas require a selection of wool production based on indexes established trough objective wool traits measurement for samples collected from the median body regions (shoulders, ribs and thigh).