IMPORTANCE OF SPECIAL COMBINING ABILITY I N DAIRY-CATTLE BREEDING

The paternal maternal grandsire interaction components in dairy trai ts from the Holstein dairy cattle population in Hannover are relativel y small. Their genetic interpretation leads to the conclusion, that no nadditive variability for dairy traits is unimportant in magnitude. Th erefore, this interaction component can be ignored in mating recommend ations. The multivariate analysis of the data, which was exceedingly c ostly in terms of CPU time, revealed that the genetic correlations bas ed on the sire components were distinctly different from those based o n the sire maternal grandsire components.