Generalised heritability and its estimation

Abstract

Heritability has been found to play a very important role in developing plans for the improvement of individual economic characters in plant and animal breeding. For more than one character, however, the concept of heritability has not been so widely exploited, though it can be generalised, using multivariate methods. There could then be several measures of generalised heritability. In this paper, the concept of standard generalised variance (SGV) which is the kth root of the determinant of a matrix has been used to give a measure of generalised heritability. Its method of estimation by half-sib analysis has also been discussed and illustrated with the help of data on poultry for three characters.