Blog

Understanding Heritability

This handout offers a foundational introduction to heritability in plant breeding. It defines heritability through the lens of correlation between genotype and phenotype, and walks through plot-based and entry-mean heritability calculations using variance components. I used it for better understanding experimental designs with balanced replication.

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Heritability for Unbalanced Designs

This document builds on the previous handout, introducing BLUP and its statistical properties. It explains the relationship between prediction error, reliability, and heritability in unbalanced experimental designs. Written thinking of real-world data complexity.

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Selection Intensity is Not Linear

This post uses R code and plots to illustrate how selection intensity behaves across the spectrum of selected individuals. It shows how extremely high intensities give diminishing returns, offering key insights for applying the breeder’s equation effectively.