The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of pyruvate and trolox on the thawed sperm quality. For freezing, antioxidants were added to INRA 82-HEPES extender to protect sperm from the deleterious effects of oxidative stress, according to the treatments: T1= INRA82-HEPES without antioxidants; T2= INRA82-HEPES + 2mM of pyruvate and T3= INRA82-HEPES + 120 mM de trolox. The thawed semen samples were evaluated according to the total (MT) and progressive (MP) motility, integrity of plasma and acrossomal membrane, DNA integrity, membrane stability and mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm). It was observed that the addition of pyruvate resulted in a significantly higher total sperm motility (P<0.05) to those obtained with trolox (9.17 and 14.5%, respectively). It can be concluded that the addition of pyruvate improves sperm motility (18.92 and 19.0%, respectively) in samples from fertile and sub-fertile stallions submitted to freezing.
trolox; pyruvate; freezing; spermatic viability; equine