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Abstract

The effect of adding orange juice to the extender of roosters’ semen on mass activity, individual motility, dead and abnormal spermatozoa and acrosomal abnormalities were studied. A total of 60 White layer cocks, 32 weeks of age, randomly divided into 6 groups of 10 cocks each were used in this experiment. The treatment groups were; T1 – the control (fresh semen) ; T2 – the semen extended 1 : 1 with Al-Daraji 2 extender (AD2E) alone , whereas T3 , T4 , T5 and T6 represented semen samples extended with AD2E extender and supplemented with 1 , 4 , 7 or 10 ml of orange juice / 100 ml extender. Results revealed that after 0, 24, 48 or 72 h in vitro storage, the supplementation of roosters semen extender with 7 and 10 ml orange juice / 100 ml of extender (T5, T6) caused significant (P < 0.05) increases in mass activity and individual motility of spermatozoa and significant decreases (P < 0.05) in percentages of dead spermatozoa, abnormal spermatozoa and acrosomal abnormalities compared with control group. However, T2, T3 and T4 groups showed significant improvements in all of theses parameters in comparison with control group. Moreover, it was also noticed that there no significant differences (p> 0.05) between T5 and T6 and among T2, T3 and T4 regarding all semen characteristics included in this study. In conclusion the supplementation of orange juice into semen extender plays an important role in protecting spermatozoa against the harmful effects of lipid peroxidation during in vitro storage of roosters’ semen for up to 72 hours.