AGB 121: Principles of Animal Genetics and Population Genetics (2+1)

PARENT-OFFSPRING ANALYSIS

• The parent-offspring relationship can be used for estimating the genetic correlation.
• To estimate heritability of one character from the resemblance between offspring and parents, we compute the COV of offspring and parent for the one character by taking the product of the parent or mid parent value and mean value of the offspring.
• To estimate the genetic correlation between two characters we compute what might be called the cross-covariance obtained from the product of the value of trait X in parents and value of trait Y in offspring or vice versa.
• This cross covariance is half the genetic covariance of the two characters that is ½ COV_A(XY).
• In addition, the covariance of offspring and parents for each of the trait are also needed separately for the estimation of genetic correlation and the genetic correlation is given by