Estimation of Genetic Parameters using Animal Model for Some Performance Traits of Nili-Ravi Buffaloes.

The objective of this study was to estimate the genetic parameters of productive traits of Nili-Ravi buffaloes including milk yield (MY), lactation length (LL) and dry period (DP) for the identification of superior animals. For this purpose, data on 9003 lactation records of Nili-Ravi buffaloes from four institutional herds in Punjab, Pakistan were used for the present study. Model incorporating all known relationships was used for estimating variance components by ASREML and DFREML programs. The heritability evaluations for 305-day milk yield (305-day MY), total milk yield (TMY) and LL ranged from 9 to 23, 10 to 18 and 7 to 18 percent, for different parities. The overall heritability for 305-day MY, TMY, LL and DP, were 9, 10, 6 and 3 percent, respectively. The repeatability estimates for the 305-day MY, TMY, LL and DP were 35, 36, 22 and 9 percent, respectively. The low estimations for genetic parameters for all the production traits proposed that most of the observed variant in these traits was due to environmental settings or non-additive genetic effects. However high genetic variability indicates that there is an ample opening for the advancement of these productive traits while including in the future breeding programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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