Abstract:

In this paper, different expressions of a genetic model were presented for the halfsib progeny test of forest trees at a single site. Formulas of estimating the variance components were derived by using ANOVA method for both balanced data and unbalanced data based on the genetic model, and the procedures were also given for calculating sampling variances of the estimators and the statistic for hypothesis test of variance components. Furthermore, a formula of family heritability was given for unbalanced data, and the procedures to calculate sampling variances of family heritability and single tree heritability were also described. For any two quantitative traits, the methods to calculate the genetic correlation coefficient and its sampling variance were presented. Finally, a Windows software was developed to calculate all the parameters of the genetic model and can be freely used by forest breeders.

Key words: progeny test, variance components, heritability, genetic correlation, unbalanced data