Heritability Estimates of Growth-Related Traits in Oriental River Prawns, Macrobrachium nipponense

Abstract

Breeding programs in oriental river prawn populations would benefit from a knowledge of heritabilities for growth-related traits to assess their potential for genetic improvement. This study reports the results of heritability estimation and evaluation of epistatic interactions for growth-related traits in oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense). The results showed that heritability estimates (h2) were low to medium in magnitude, ranging between 0.10 (±0.02) and 0.22 (±0.01) for females and between 0.08 (±0.01) and 0.26 (±0.02) for males. The additive × additive epistasis was directional and synergistic for body weight (growth), body length, and two processing traits (abdominal meat weight and abdominal meat percentage). The presence of biallelic epistasis provides additional new information for the formulation of selection programs. Elimination of some sources of nonadditive effects from phenotypes can lead to more accurate genetic evaluations, and more desirable genetic gains could be achieved through the integration of heritability, additive effects (breeding values), and epistasis in oriental river prawns.