Application of Variance Components Estimators in Plant Breeding

To conduct any breeding program, understanding of the genetic structure of traits and effect of environment and genetic by environment interaction as well as effects of random or fixed in the analysis of results is essential. Subsequently, analysis of variances and variance components are important in plant and animal breeding. The ANOVA is one of the best estimators for variance components. But this estimator is not preferred to maximum likelihood (ML) and Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) methods when variance components are negatively estimated and unbalanced datasets arise. Therefore, the objective of this research is a review of comparison of estimates of variance components using ANOVA, ML and REML method in linear mixed models using experimental data.