nouveaux résultats destimation de lhéritabilité des gains en course des pur-sang en france结果d估算de l heritabilite des收益在课程des pur-sang在法国.pdfVIP

Article original Nouveaux résultats d’estimation de l’héritabilité des gains en course des en France pur-sang B Langlois, C Blouin, A Tavernier Station de génétique quantitative et appliquée, Institut national de la recherche agronomique, 78352 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France (Reçu le 14 novembre 1994; accepté le 26 février 1996) Summary - New results on the estimation of the heritabilities of earnings of thoroughbreds in France. Logarithms of yearly earnings of 232 893 horses in flat races and 85145 horses in steeplechases and hurdle races in France from 1950 to 1990 were analysed according to an animal model. REML methodology was applied to chronological subsamples of this enormous file to estimate genetic parameters. In flat races, from the birth year 1960 to 1987, heritability increased from 0.22 to 0.28 according to a statistically highly significant linear trend, and the repeatability between 2 and3 years changed in a similary significant manner from 0.85 to 0.40. Over the jumps, from 1962 to 1985, fluctuations appeared probably due to a lower precision of the estimates and no significant evolution could be seen for heritability (near 0.25). Repeatability between4 and 5 years, however, increased significantly. The reasons for the evolution of these parameters over time are discussed. Two main hypotheses are mentioned: (i) introduction of external genetic variability in French pedigrees through American blood (this hypothesis however is not in agreement with the very small genetic distance between the two populations); and (ii) an equilibrium between two opposite sources generating linkage disequilibrium, selection and assortative m