Study of the effect of genotype-environment interaction on age at first calving and production traits in Nellore cattle using multi-trait reaction norms and Bayesian inference.

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of genotype-environment interaction on yearling weight, age at first calving and post-weaning weight gain in Nellore cattle using multi-trait reaction norm models. The environmental gradient was defined as a function of the mean yearling weight of the contemporary groups. A first-order random regression sire model with four classes of residual variance was used in the analyses and Bayesian methods were applied to estimate the (co)variance components. The heritability estimates ranged from 0.284 to 0.547, 0.222 to 0.316 and 0.256 to 0.522 for yearling weight, age at first calving and post-weaning weight gain, respectively. The lowest genetic correlations between environment groups for each trait were 0.38, 0.02 and 0.04 for yearling weight, age at first calving and post-weaning weight gain, respectively. Differences in the correlation estimates were observed between traits in the same environments, with the magnitude of the estimates tending toward zero as the environment improved. The results highlight the importance of including genotype-environment interactions in genetic evaluation programs considering the differences observed between environmental groups not only in terms of heritability, but also of genetic correlations.