Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LXVII, Issue 2
Written by Osamah Mahmood Abdulzahra MURSHEDI, Horia GROSU, Petruț-Lucian PARASCHIVESCU
The objective of the paper is the comparative analysis of three selection methods, from the point of view of breeding values, for production traits (the amount of milk, milk fat and protein) and reproduction traits (prolificacy) in the Palas Milk Line sheep population. Totally, 486 sheep were analyzed. The heritabilities for breeding values were estimated by the REML method, using an animal model for the four traits analyzed, and were: 0.197, 0.209, 0.263 and 0.235. The comparison of the three methods was carried out by means of the Spearman rank correlation, which allows the comparison of the ranking of the same observation units (individuals), on different criteria (different selection methods): The Spearman rank correlation was applied for the following couples of methods: BLUP and BLP; BLUP and own performances and BLP and own performances. The results for each couple were: 0.998, 0.89 and 0.899, for the amount of milk; 0.996, 0.907 and 0.919, for the amount of fat in milk and 0.998, 0.89 and 0.897, for the amount of protein in milk. For prolificacy, the rank correlation values were 0.953, 0.837 and 0.912. These results show that the highest agreement was achieved between the BLUP and BLP methods.
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