Segmenting the livestock population in the state of Karnataka into homogenous zones – multidimensional scaling approach M Reshma, Faculty, A Sachindra Babu, Associate Professor Department of Dairy Economics and Business Management, Dairy Science College, KVAFSU, Hebbal, Bangalore, India Online published on 13 August, 2013. Abstract In this study an attempt was made to segment livestock population in the state of Karnataka into homogeneous zones based on resource endowments. Based on the results of MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING (MDS) three distinct groups of districts were carved out based on their proximity and the districts were identified in different zones. In the first zone, there were 13 districts as Bangalore rural, Ramanagara, Chitradurga, Davangere, Kolar, Chikkaballapura, Tumkur, Mandya, Mysore, Belgaum, Bijapur, Bagalkot and Haveri district. In the second zone there were 11 districts namely Bangalore, Shimoga, Chikmagalur, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Hassan, Kodagu, Chamarajanagar, Dharwad, Gadag and Uttara Kannada districts. The third zone comprises of Bellary, Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgiri, Raichur and Koppal districts. The multiple discriminant function analysis was used to check whether the groups of districts (zones) are homogenous or not. The results of the Eigen values and percentage variance explained by the two discriminant functions showed that the first function has the highest percentage of variance (94.4 per cent) and the second function has least percentage of variance (5.6 percent). These two functions together could explain 100 percent of the variation and the estimated discriminant functions have effectively discriminated the districts in three zones and the districts in each of the three zones were of homogenous nature of the three zones were of homogenous nature. Top Keywords Multidimensional scaling, Grouping, Districts, Discriminant function analysis. Top |