Abstract

The experiment was carried out between January and March 2020 in the animal reproduction laboratory at the University of California, Davis USA. The objective was to evaluate the effect of the presence of the corpus luteum in the aspirated oocytes of ovine female ovaries at different stages of the reproductive cycle, on the parthenogenetic development of embryos in vitro to determine the average number of oocytes collected per ovary, percentage of viability of oocytes, percentages of cleavage and blastocysts in vitro and the efficiency of the procedure. 158 ovaries from sheep from a slaughterhouse were used; mean values of 3.33, 1.24 and 1.52 oocytes / ovary were obtained and the percentages of viability were 100%, 45.87%, and 56.82% for oocytes from ovaries with corpus luteum, ovaries without corpus luteum and ovaries from pregnant females respectively (P≤0.05); there were no differences (P>0.05) in the cleavage percentages with values of 72.5%, 72.0%, and 56.0% and in the parthenogenetic blastocysts with values of 37.93%, 44.44%, and 42.86% for oocytes from ovaries with corpus luteum, ovaries without corpus luteum and ovaries of pregnant females respectively, however, the highest production of blastocysts / ovary (P≤0.05) was from ovaries with corpus luteum. It is concluded that the effect of the presence of the corpus luteum in the aspirated oocytes of ovine female ovaries improves the parthenogenetic development of embryos in vitro when evaluating the production of blastocysts per ovary.

Keywords: Parthenogenic activation; Biotechnology; Embryos; In vitro fertilization