EFFECT OF BEE HONEY-INCLUDED EGG YOLK BASED EXTENDERS ON MOTILITY, VIABILITY AND FERTILIZING ABILITY OF FROZEN RABBIT SEMEN

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Animal Prod. Dept., Faculty Agric., Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

The proportion of bee honey, added to Tris-based extender with or without dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) for extension of New Zealand White (NZW) rabbit buck semen conserved as  frozen form was studied. Semen were collected from ten sexually mature NZW rabbit bucks, pooled and diluted with 16 different extenders based on Tris-citric-glucose with or without DMSO. Honey was added in increasing concentrations (v/v) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.5, 10% and decreasing concentrations of egg yolk 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 12.5 and 10% (v/v). Evaluations for percentages of progressive motility, dead and abnormal spermatozoa were done immediately after dilution and one month of freezing in liquid nitrogen. Fertilizing ability was evaluated as pregnancy rate and litter size of 20 females inseminated artificially for each extender, which showed ≥ 50% sperm progressive motility after thawing. Extenders contained 2 and 3% honey showed the best values for sperm motility, livability and abnormalities, also for pregnancy rate and litter size.
Conclusively, the results of the present study suggested that the addition of bee honey to egg yolk extenders improves the motility and viability of rabbit spermatozoa and may improve cryopreservation of rabbit spermatozoa. However, this effect is concentration dependent and higher concentrations of honey may have negative effect on sperm quality or fertilizing ability.
 

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