Heritability of Carcass Length, Carcass Backfat Thickness and Loin Lean Area in Swine

Data from 531 carcasses from the swine breeding project were used in this study to estimate the heritability of carcass length, carcass backfat thickness and loin lean area, and to determine the phenotypic and genetic correlations between these traits. Heritability estimates obtained by intra-class correlations from components of variance indicated that all three traits are moderately heritable in the range of 0.4 to 0.6. Phenotypic correlations calculated on an intra-season, intra-station basis were small in absolute magnitude with the largest correlations being a −.36 between backfat thickness and carcass length and −.27 between backfat thickness and loin lean area. The genetic correlations between the three traits were all negative but small in absolute magnitude.