Study of Robust Estimation of Heritability

Abstract

Heritability is an important genetic parameter and is widely used by the geneticist and breeder for selection and improvement in quantitative traits. The precise and accurate knowledge of heritability is very important for the success a breeding programme. In the plant and animal breeding data it has been observed in many practical situations that observations are not independently distributed and some kind of correlation among the observations exists. In the presence of significantly correlated trends in the data, the classical assumption of independence between observations is violated. The information on genetic components of variances of the important characters is the prime interest of plant and animal breeders. Thus, the estimation of various genetic variances and inferring about their inheritance, based on estimates of the different genetic parameters is very important from plant and animal breeding programme point of view.