Agriculture & Forestry, Vol. 68 Issue 3: 241-253, 2022, Podgorica 241 Hoda, A., Mecaj, R., Hykaj, G. (2022). Morphometric characterization of four sheep breeds reared in South East of Albania. Agriculture and Forestry, 68 (3): 241-253. doi: 10.17707/AgricultForest.68.3.18 DOI: 10.17707/AgricultForest.68.3.18 Anila HODA 1 *, Roland MECAJ 2 , Gentjan HYKAJ 3 MORPHOMETRIC CHARACTERIZATION OF FOUR SHEEP BREEDS REARED IN SOUTH EAST OF ALBANIA SUMMARY Sheep are an important livestock species in Albania. The study was conducted at the Agricultural Technology Transfer Center of Korca in South East area of Albania. This study is focused in two local sheep breeds that have the status as endangered, Shkodrane and Lara e Polisit and two imported breeds Awasi and Il de France reared in this region under the care, responsibility and management of ATTC of Korca. Morphometric measurements and indices of a 190 unrelated and randomly selected animals were analyzed. Awasi have the largest wither height (70.31), rump height (73.56), body length (117.87), chest depth (36.16). Il de France is the largest breed related to rump width (24.89) chest circumference (90.978), cannon bone circumference (8.91), body weight (55.29). Shkodrane is the smallest breed regrading to body length (93.56), chest dept (30.98), chest width (15.91), chest circumference (76.31). All breeds have rectangular body frame, with an index of body frame ranging from 153.06 to 167.87. All morphometric traits were significantly positively correlated. The analysis indicated that body weight was highly correlated with all morphometric measurements. The highest correlation was with chest circumference (0.92) and the smallest (0.65) with cannon bone circumference. The PCA of all morphometric parameters indicated that the three components accounted 90.3% of the cumulative variance. The PCA and UPGMA indicated some admixture between two Albanian sheep breeds Shkodrane and Lara e Polisit and a pure differentiation of Ile de France and Awasi. A regression analysis was performed to predict the body weight from morphometric measurements. Keywords: body measures, correlations, regression, PCA INTRODUCTION Sheep are an important livestock species in Albania, especially for the local community that manage them. They are an important source of milk, meat and wool. In 2020, (Instat, 2020) (Accessed 21 April 2022) the number of sheep was 1.55 million heads, where the milked sheep were 1.17 million heads representing 1 Anila Hoda,*(corresponding author: ahoda@ubt.edu.al), Agricultural University of Tirana, Tirana, ALBANIA; 2 Roland Mecaj, Agricultural technology Transfer Center, Korca, ALBANIA; 3 Gentjan Hykaj, Polis University, Tirana, ALBANIA Notes: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Authorship Form signed online. Recieved:26/05/2021 Accepted:02/08/2022