The present study highlights that qualitative differences
do exist in bull urine, estrus, diestrus, and pregnant buffalo
cowurine, as evidenced by GC-MS. In the previous studies on
chemical identification of urinary compounds by different
workers in species like moose, mouse, rat, cow, buffalo, and
so on, the analysis for different urinary compounds had been
done by using pooled urine samples. On the contrary, in the
present study, individual urine samples of the animals were
used for GC-MS analysis. A part of the analysiswas also done
on pooled samples, though. As already mentioned above,
there is a possibility that pooling of the urine samples might
have resulted in alteration of chemical structure of some of
the urinary compounds present in the individual samples.
Thus, some of the compounds detected in pooled urinewere
not found in any of the individual samples and vice versa.
Furthermore, because our criterion for identification of
different urinary compounds was based on the presence of
compounds in the individual urine samples, it might have
reduced the possibility of finding any estrus-specific urinary
compound. Hence, no estrus-specific urinary chemosignal
could be identified in the present study. Nonetheless, the
possibility that lesser number of samples used would not
have enabled us to detect the presence of estrus-specific
compounds cannot be ignored. It is interesting to note that
some diestrus as well as pregnancy urinary compounds
could be identified, which were absent during other stages
of estrous cycle, indicating that these compounds were
specific during these periods. Besides, some bull-specific
urinary compounds could also be identified. Further investigations
concerning the identification of estrus-specific
or pregnancy-specific urinary compounds in a fairly large
population of buffaloes are therefore warranted.