The objective of this study was to estimate direct and maternal additive genetic, non-additive and heterozygotic effects for pre and post-weaning traits and to develop equations to predict growth performance in a multi-breed Aberdeen Angus (Angus)-Nellore herd. The analyses were performed by SAS® using two different models. The model 1 (M1) was used for the pre-weaning traits, weaning weight adjusted to 205 days of age (P205) and average daily gain from birth to weaning (GMDND), and included the fixed effects of contemporary groups (GC), genetic groups (GG) and the covariates age of calf at weaning (IBD) and age of cow at calving (IVP). The same model except for replacing the covariate IBD by age of calf at yearling (IBS) was used for the post-weaning traits - yearling weight adjusted to 550 days of age (P550) and average daily gain from weaning to yearling (GMDDS). A multiple regression model (M2) was used after adjusting the data for GC, IVP and IBD (P205) and IBS (P550) effects and included the breed direct and maternal additive and the direct and maternal heterozygotic effects. Animals with higher maternal heterozygosis performed better for P205 and GMDND. A similar trend was observed for the direct heterozygosis. The direct genetic effect was larger than the maternal genetic effect for P550 and GMDDS. The additive direct effect determined better performances in the Angus breed. Differences between the estimated (M1) and predicted (M2) averages for P205, P550 and GMDDS were not significant.
heterosis; multicolinearity; multiple regression; performance estimation and prediction
