03108naa a2200241 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001902200140006002400290007410000180010324501150012126000090023650003210024552020940056665300120266065300160267265300160268865300110270465300240271570000160273970000200275577300910277510029602019-02-04       2000    bl uuuu     u00u1 u    #d  a0021-88127 a10.2527/2000.78133x2DOI1 aDE MATTOS, D.  aVariance and covariance components for weaning weight for Herefords in three countries.h[electronic resource]  c2000  aArticle history: Received January 19, 1999. // Accepted August 8, 1999. Research was funded by the American Hereford Assoc., Kansas City, MO; Canadian Hereford Assoc., Calgary, Alberta, Canada; and Instituto Nacional de Investigacion Agropecuaria (INIA), Montevideo, Uruguay. The study was part of Hatch Project 851.  aABSTRACT. Records from the Hereford Associations of the United States (USA), Canada, and Uruguay were used to estimate genetic and phenotypic variances and covariances for weaning weight. Estimation was done using a complete animal model, relatively large data sets, and the same methodology for the three countries in order to determine whether genetic parameters for weaning weight were homogeneous across environments. Data were composed of 2,322,722, 487,661, and 102,986 edited weaning weight records for USA, Canada, and Uruguay, respectively. Ten samples were obtained from each country by eliminating data from small herds with fewer than 500 records, selecting herds at random from the entire data set after removing the small herds, and then retaining the direct-sire-connected contemporary groups within each sample. The final sample sizes ranged from 9,832 to 46,377 records. An accelerated EM-REML algorithm was used in estimating the (co)variance components in each sample. The estimates were pooled by calculating the arithmetic mean of the 10 samples from within each country. Direct and maternal (in parentheses) heritability estimates were .24 (.16), .20 (.16), and .23 (.18) for USA, Canada, and Uruguay, respectively. Maternal heritabilities reported here are nearly 50% smaller than the values currently used in national genetic evaluation for the breed, which were estimated using sire-maternal grandsire models. Covariance between direct and maternal was negative in all countries, accounting for 6, 8, and 10% of the total phenotypic variation, and the total dam effect was 32.5, 37.0, and 34.0% in USA, Canada, and Uruguay, respectively. Total heritabilities were similar among the countries, with values of .19, .19, and .17 for the three respective countries. The similarity of genetic and environmental parameters across the three countries suggests that joint genetic evaluation is feasible across environments provided that the genotype x environment interaction is negligible and can be ignored. ?2000 American Society of Animal Science. All rights reserved.  aANIMALS  aBEEF CATTLE  aBODY WEIGHT  aCATTLE  aGENETIC VARIABILITY1 aMISZTAL, I.1 aBERTRAND, J. K.  tJournal of Animal Science, January 2000, volume 78, Issue 1, pages 33-37. OPEN ACCESS.