Inheritance of Economic Traits of Dairy Buffaloes in Pakistan

Inheritance of economic traits was studied in Nili-Ravi dairy buffaloes through analysis of data comprising 5037 records of daughters of 79 sires. Data were collected from three large-sized state dairy farms. Heritability, genetic and phenotypic correlations of some indicator traits on important production and reproduction traits were worked out. Based upon analysis of records for first lactation traits, higher values were recorded for heritability of first lactation milk yield, standard 305 days milk yield, lactation length, birth weight and first lactation peak daily yield (h = 0.62, 0.61, 0.54, 0.39, 0.35, respectively). Comparatively lower heritability was recorded for reproductive traits including age at first calving, age at puberty and first calving interval (h = 0.28, 0.21, 0.15, respectively). Analysis of records for all lactation traits provided higher values for heritability of lactation length, lactation yield, standard 305 days milk yield, yield per day of calving interval (h = 0.43, 0.38, 0.34, 0.31, respectively) while peak daily yield, daily yield and calving interval had comparatively lower heritability (h = 0.26, 0.24 and 0.18, respectively). The findings suggested that heritability estimates of first lactation economic traits provided a better tool for selective breeding, expected to lead to rapid aggregate genetic gains in dairy buffaloes. In addition, the milk yielding traits and birth weight were highly heritable and the reproductive traits were low.