Estimation of genetic relationships between growth curve parameters in Guilan sheep

The objective of this study was to estimate variance components and genetic parameters for growth curve parameters in Guilan sheep. Studied traits were parameters of Brody growth model which included A (asymptotic mature weight), B (initial animal weight) and K (maturation rate). The data set and pedigree information used in this study were obtained from the Agricultural Organization of Guilan province (Rasht, Iran) and comprised 8647 growth curve records of lambs from birth to 240 days of age during 1994 to 2014. Marginal posterior distributions of parameters and variance components were estimated using TM program. The Gibbs sampler was run 300000 rounds and the first 60000 rounds were discarded as a burn-in period. Posterior mean estimates of direct heritabilities for A, B and K were 0.39, 0.23 and 0.039, respectively. Estimates of direct genetic correlation between growth curve parameters were 0.57, 0.03 and −0.01 between A-B, A-K and B-K, respectively. Estimates of direct genetic trends for A, B and K were positive and their corresponding values were 0.014 ± 0.003 (P < 0.001), 0.0012 ± 0.0009 (P > 0.05) and 0.000002 ± 0.0001 (P > 0.05), respectively. Residual correlations between growth curve parameters varied form −0.52 (between A-K) to 0.48 (between A-B). Also, phenotypic correlations between growth curve parameters varied form −0.49 (between A-K) to 0.47 (between A-B). The results of this study indicated that improvement of growth curve parameters of Guilan sheep seems feasible in selection programs. It is worthwhile to develop a selection strategy to obtain an appropriate shape of growth curve through changing genetically the parameters of growth model.