BEST LINEAR UNBIASED PREDICTOR FOR SPECIFIC COMBINING ABILITY OF GRIFFING’S DESIGNS TWO AND FOUR

Abstract

Parameters estimation in diallel crosses experiments aids to objective decision making in plant breeding programs. In these experiments the estimation of specific combining ability has been done on the basis of a fixed effects model, in spite of their random nature. For this reason, in the present work in Griffing’s designs two and four under the correct mixed effects model, the empirical best linear unbiased predictors for specific combining abilities, are derived. Furthermore, a computational algorithm in SAS-IML is presented to obtain such predictors.