Estimates of Direct and Maternal Effects on Growth Traits in Angora Rabbits (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Selection at an early age, for breeding and higher production, is a prerequisite under intensive livestock production system, through out the world. It holds true for Angora rabbit as well, where the farmers concern primarily for growth and wool production; as the body weight is directly correlated to the wool yield of the animals (Jelinek et al., 1980; Garcia and Magofke, 1982; Singh et al., 2006). In most of the rabbit breeding programmes, post weaning growth had been considered very effective criteria for selection (Piles et al., 2004) and evident that live body weight increased significantly after selection for fleece yield in Angora rabbits (Rafat et al., 2007, 2008). A strong positive correlation between the body weight and wool production dictate growth as desirable trait for early selection in Angora rabbits aimed to increase wool production (Qinyu, 1992). Studies in rabbit had revealed that both direct and maternal influences are important for animal growth (Ferraz et al., 1992; Lukefahr et al., 1993; Lukefahr et al., 1996) and affects the phenotypic expression of the young through her genotype for maternal effects and direct additive genes for growth. The best method to estimate genetic parameters is animal model (Henderson, 1988). Animal models using Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedure had been widely used, in meat rabbits, to estimate the genetic and environmental parameters for different traits including growth (Ferraz et al., 1992; Lukefahr et al., 1993; Lukefahr et al., 1996). However, use of such animal model procedure for estimates of direct and maternal effects on growth traits of Angora rabbit is limited. The objective of this study was, therefore, to estimate genetic (co)variance components for growth traits using REML procedure with various combinations of direct and maternal effects for German Angora flock raised in sub temperate Himalayan region.