Quantitative genetics of packed erythrocyte volume in White Leghorn

The present investigation was undertaken on a long-term selected strain of White Leghorn to study the inheritance of packed cell volume and its association with growth, egg-production, and egg-quality. The testing ojthree main assumptions underlying analysis of variance lor genetic parameter estimation viz., normality of distribution, homogeneity of variance among hatches and relationship between mean and variance showed that these assumptions were fulfilled to a large extent. The half-sib heritability estimates for packed cell volume on hatch adjusted data varied between 0.11 and 0.28. Hatch adjustment had a very small effect on heritability estimates. The genetic and phenotypic correlations of packed cell volume with body weight at various ages were consistently positive and moderate (0.411 to 0.678). The genetic and phenotypic correlations of packed cell volume with egg production and egg-quality traits were low with the exception of a high correlation with egg specific gravity (0.550±0.239).