KARYOTYPE OF ANATOLIAN WATER BUFFALO (BUBALUS BUBALIS)

The water buffalo is an important farm animal raised all over the world but mostly in Asia. They were distributed from southern Asia to Europe during the Pleistocene Epoch. They are classified according to their chromosome number and morphological data either as river type (2n=50) or swamp type (2n=48). Anatolian water buffalo was classified as river type and no further karyotyping specification was made up to now. Previous studies have shown that classification based solely on morphological data is not adequate. Therefore we have applied a procedure in order to identify the chromosome number of the Anatolian water buffalo for the purpose of proving them to be of the river type. Our study has shown that Anatolian water buffalo possess 50 chromosomes which proves their classification as river type buffalos.