Agricultural sector accounts for about 1/3 of the Iranian GDP and 1/4 of the country workforce. More than 90% of the Iranian food requirements are produced in the country. Animal agriculture covers over 40% of the agricultural activities. More than 57% of the available animal units in the country are sheep and goats. Desertification, deforestation, water shortage, erosion, low efficiency and ou...

BACKGROUND Accurate identification of sheep nematodes is a critical point in epidemiological studies and monitoring of drug resistance in flocks. However, due to a close morphological similarity between the eggs and larval stages of many of these nematodes, such identification is not a trivial task. There are a number of studies showing that molecular targets in ribosomal DNA (Internal transcri...

BACKGROUND Multiple births occur frequently in some Iranian sheep breeds, while infertility scarcely occurs. Mutation detection in major fecundity genes has been explored in most of Iranian sheep flocks over the last decade. However, previously reported single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for bone morphogenetic protein receptor-(BMPR)-1B and growth differentiation factor ) GDF9( known to aff...

b-lactoglobulin (coded by the b-lg gene) is the major milk whey protein in ruminants. studies have shown that this protein is polymorphic in many breeds of sheep as a result of a single base pair substitution in the b-lg gene that also gives rise to rsai restriction fragment length polymorphism (rflp). blood samples were collected from 391 animals belonging to 5 iranian and 6 russian sheep bree...

blood samples were collected from the jugular vein of 101 clinically healthy iranian fat-tailed sheep according to their age (5 years) and sex. serum haptoglobin (hp) was measured based upon the preservation of the peroxidase activity of haemoglobin, which is directly proportional to the amount of hp. the reference value for serum hp of apparently healthy iranian fat-tailed sheep was 0.05-0.18 ...

BACKGROUND Antigen B (AgB) is frequently used for immuno-diagnosis of human cystic echinococcosis (CE). Echinococcus granulosus AgBs show a high degree of genetic variability in different hosts or in different CE endemic areas. The present study aimed to evaluate the genetic polymorphisms of encoding antigen B2 gene (AgB2) among different Iranian isolates of E. granulosus. METHODS A total of ...

data on 361 lambs of mehraban (n=90), ghezel (n=92), ghezel × mehraban (n=87), and mehraban × ghezel (n=92, sire breed listed first) were used to estimate individual heterosisfor lamb growth. the obtained results demonstrated that lambs of purebreds of ghezel and mehraban showed the highest and the lowest birth weight, respectively (p

Aim: Bluetongue is a non-contagious, infectious viral disease of domestic and wild ruminants; which is believed to have originated in Africa. The epidemiology of Bluetongue virus infection is poorly defined in many parts of the world, including a wide range of Asia and the Middle East. This paper reports the results of a Bluetongue serological survey in sheep from some provinces of Iran during ...

Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is one of the most prevalent zoonotic diseases in some countries world. considered a neglected disease. This disease increases economic damage via medical costs and loss human livestock productivity. The aim current study gains better understanding prevalence CE sheep. Totally 250 sheep sera were collected. 25 serum samples from newborn lambs used as negative, others ...