Efficacy of different methods in genetic evaluation of Murrah sires

Abstract

The data comprising performance records of 493 Murrah buffaloes, progeny of 61 sires, maintained at 7 State Livestock cum Agricultural Farms of Uttar Pradesh and distributed over a period of 23 years from 1970-1992, were utilized in this study. The sire effects and ranks of 61 sires were estimated for two production (MY 300 and FLMY) and 2 production efficiency (MY/FLL and MY/ASC) traits using 4 methods of sire evaluation, viz. BLUP, SRLS, LS and CC. The criteria used for comparing efficacy of different methods were theoretical properties and the Spearman's product moment correlation between sire effects and rank correlations from different methods of sire evaluation. The BLUP and SRLS consistently estimated lower ranges of sire effects than LS and CC methods. More than 60% of sires ranked common among top 10 sires by different methods on the basis of different economic traits. The distribution of sires for genetic merit estimated by various methods of sire evaluation based on different economic traits revealed that more than half of the sires had the genetic merit less than the population average for respective traits by all methods except LS and SRLS for MY 300 and MY/FLL. Considering the findings of this study and theoretical properties of different methods of sire evaluation, it may be concluded that BLUP method was more efficient for Murrah sire evaluation, however, its superiority over SRLS was marginal.