Attempts to develop high yielding varieties in Ghana have mostly relied on the introduction of new clones to broaden the range of planting materials for yield improvement. The objective of this study was to estimate the genetic variation and heritability for bean yield of six recommended cocoa clones using these as males in crosses with five seed garden parents. Twenty-four families obtained from a 5 × 6 North Carolina II (NC II) incomplete factorial mating design together with 19 high yielding single crosses, of which four were standard mixed hybrids, were planted in a randomized complete block design with four replications and evaluated for bean yield over 6 years. To account for the serial correlation among yield data collected from the same plants over years, six models with different covariance structures were tested. The general covariance model emerged appropriate based on Akaike information criterion values with significant (P < 0.01) family × year interaction. Average bean yield was highest in the NC II families followed by the specific crosses then the standard mixed hybrids. Combining ability analysis among the NC II was significant for female, male and female × male interaction along with a narrow-sense heritability of 0.26. Clone CRG 6035 among the males which had good general combining ability could be added to the seed garden parents, while the promising hybrids (NA 33 × SCA 9, SCA 6 × Pound 10, T60/887 × PA 121 and T79/501 × CRG 6035/103) undergo stability tests before release.

This study was conducted to estimate the relative contribution of dominance genetic effects to efficiency-related traits including Kleiber ratio (KR), efficiency of growth (EF) and relative growth rate (RGR) in Baluchi sheep. To this end, each trait was analysed with a series of 12 animal models which were identical for fixed and additive genetic effects but differed for combinations of dominance genetic and maternal effects. The Akaike's information criterion (AIC) was used to rank models. (Co)variances between traits were estimated using bivariate analyses. For all traits studied, according to AIC values, models containing the dominance genetic effects provided a better data fit than otherwise identical models. By including dominance genetic effects in the model, additive genetic variance did not change, but a significant decrease was observed in the residual variance (24, 19 and 25% for KR, EF and RGR, respectively). Estimates of dominance heritability $( {\boldsymbol h}_{\boldsymbol d}^ 2 )$ were 0.20 ± 0.05, 0.17 ± 0.05 and 0.19 ± 0.07 for KR, EF and RGR, respectively, more than corresponding estimates of additive heritability ${\bf ( }{\boldsymbol h}_{\boldsymbol a}^{\bf 2} {\bf ) }$ as 0.14 ± 0.02, 0.09 ± 0.03 and 0.13 ± 0.02, respectively. Dominance genetic correlations between traits were 0.89 ± 0.17 (KR-EF), 0.86 ± 0.20 (KR-RGR) and 0.93 ± 0.21 (EF-RGR). Additive genetic correlations between traits were 0.84 ± 0.05 (KR-EF), 0.78 ± 0.04 (KR-RGR) and 0.83 ± 0.04 (EF-RGR). The Spearman correlation between additive breeding values including and excluding dominance genetic effects were close to unity either for all animals or top ranked animals. Since presence of dominance genetic effects increased the model power to fit the data, inclusion of these effects in the genetic evaluation models for Baluchi sheep was recommended.

Social support is often considered an environmental factor affecting health, especially in aging populations. However, its genetic underpinnings suggest a more complex origin. This study investigates the heritability of social support through applying a threshold model on data of a large adult sample of twins (N = 8019) from the Netherlands Twin Register, collected between 2009 and 2011. The study employed the Duke – UNC Functional Social Support Questionnaire to assess social support quality. Our analysis revealed genetic contributions to social support, with heritability estimated at 37%, without a contribution of shared environment and no differences between men and women in heritability. The study’s results underscore the complexity of social support as a trait influenced by genetic and environmental factors, challenging the notion that it is solely an environmental construct.

This research aimed to assess the agronomic performance of the progeny (F3 and F4 generations) of 48 newly developed Aus rice lines, using a randomized-complete-block-design under rainfed conditions. We found a wide range of variations in yield and yield-contributing traits among the studied genotypes. High board sense heritability percentages were found for sterility percentage (99.50 and 97.20), thousand-grain-weight (88.10 and 90.20 g), plant-height (84.90 and 86.90 cm) and day-to-maturity (84.50 and 97.60 d) in both F3 and F4 generations, respectively. However, the highest genetic advance as mean percentage was observed for sterility (48.00 and 50.60), effective tillers number per hill (ET) (44.70 and 47.10), total tillers number per hill (TT) (43.00 and 45.40) and filled-grains per panicle (41.00 and 43.20) respectively. Notably, the correlation study also identified the traits, TT (r = 0.31 and 0.45), ET (r = 0.30 and 0.44), straw yield (r = 0.57 and 0.39) and harvest index (r = 0.63 and 0.67) as effective for improving grain yield in both F3 and F4 generations, respectively. We identified higher grain yield per hill (g) and shorter to moderate crop growth duration (days) in several distinct accessions, including R1-49-7-1-1, R3-26-4-3-1, R1-6-2-3-1, R1-13-1-1-1, R1-50-1-1-1, R3-49-4-3-1, R1-47-7-3-1, R2-26-6-2-2, R3-30-1-2-1 and R1-44-1-2-1, among the 48 genotypes in both the F3 and F4 generations. A further location-specific agronomic study is recommended to assess the drought tolerance of these promising genotypes. This will further assess their suitability as potential breeding materials when developing rice varieties adapted to grow under fluctuating rainfalls conditions.

TwinsMX registry is a national research initiative in Mexico that aims to understand the complex interplay between genetics and environment in shaping physical and mental health traits among the country’s population. With a multidisciplinary approach, TwinsMX aims to advance our knowledge of the genetic and environmental mechanisms underlying ethnic variations in complex traits and diseases, including behavioral, psychometric, anthropometric, metabolic, cardiovascular and mental disorders. With information gathered from over 2800 twins, this article updates the prevalence of several complex traits; and describes the advances and novel ideas we have implemented such as magnetic resonance imaging. The future expansion of the TwinsMX registry will enhance our comprehension of the intricate interplay between genetics and environment in shaping health and disease in the Mexican population. Overall, this report describes the progress in the building of a solid database that will allow the study of complex traits in the Mexican population, valuable not only for our consortium, but also for the worldwide scientific community, by providing new insights of understudied genetically admixed populations.

The current study was motivated by an interest in deepening understanding of Brazilian twin research, which is underrepresented internationally, in an effort to rectify this situation. Our aim was threefold: (1) to carry out a comprehensive investigation of Brazilian research on twins according to the area of knowledge; (2) to evaluate the representation of research in the field of psychology in comparison with other areas; (3) to evaluate characteristics of the research that may have contributed to its exclusion from the comprehensive meta-analysis of 50 years of twin research. A scoping review was performed according to PRISMA guidelines. Titles and abstracts were searched up to 2022 in six databases: CAPES, BDLTD, PePSIC, PubMed, Google Scholar, and SciELO, using selected keywords both in Portuguese and in English (e.g., ‘twins’ and ‘Brazil’; ‘twinning’ and ‘Brazil’; ‘gemelaridade’ [twinning], and ‘gêmeos’ [twins]). Three hundred and forty publications were included in the review. Approximately half (53.8‰) used the classic twin design to investigate the heritability of several traits, and the other half (46.2%) used other research designs. The scoping review showed that the number of publications doubled approximately every 10 years. Most publications were from the health area, with medicine accounting for approximately half of the studies, followed by psychology, odontology, and biology. We found that the interest in studying twins among Brazilian scientists is increasing over the years and there are reasons to be enthusiastic about the potential impact of this trend in the global scenario.

Tetraploid wheat species from Ethiopia hold ample genetic variation, which could provide a source for improvement of wheat. A total of 196 Ethiopian tetraploid wheat (Triticum turgidum spp.) accessions, including 174 landraces and 22 improved cultivars, were evaluated at Sinana and Debrezeit to assess morphological variation, genetic advance, heritability and correlation based on 11 phenotypic traits. Except for spike length, highly significant variation (P < 0.001) among genotypes for all traits was observed. The observed mean and range values of the phenotypic traits revealed high variability in the accessions. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) values were high for grain yield, biomass yield and harvest index. Seed yield showed highly significant (P < 0.001) negative correlation with days to booting and days to maturity and positive correlation with all traits. The estimates of heritability (H2) for grain yield and the number of spikelets per spike respectively ranged from 41.78 to 84.62%. The genetic advance as a percentage of mean was low for the number of seeds per spikelet, days to booting and days to maturity; intermediate for plant height, thousand kernel weight and spike length and high for the number of spikelets per spike, the number of effective tillers per plant, grain yield, biomass yield and harvest index, respectively. The number of spikelets per spike gave a high value of genetic advance and heritability implying high genetic gain from its selection.

The present study analysed a total of 272 saffron (Crocus sativus L.) genotypes using multivariate analysis. We carefully observed and recorded information about the floral, morphological and corm attributes. Significant variations were observed among the genotypes for all the traits, indicating a high level of variability and suggesting a great potential for saffron improvement. The phenotypic variances were found to be greater than the estimated genotypic variances. Descriptive data on various morphological traits revealed significant differences in the frequency of phenotype classes as well as a wide distribution range. The high heritability estimates were observed in average number of daughter corms per plant (ANDCPP), initial weight of corms (IWC g), no. of buds/corm (NBPC), – no. of leaves in main sprout, (NLMS), number of sprouted buds per corm (NSBpC) and total number of leaves (TNL), whereas average weight of daughter corms per plant (AWBCPP), corm diameter (CDcm), pistal length (PL) cm, style length (STYLcm), fresh weight of pistals per plant (FWOPPPmg) and stigma length (STML cm), revealed medium sense of heritability. The traits dry weight of pistals per plants (DWOPPP mg), inner tepal width (ITW cm), leaf length (LLcm), number of flowers per corm (NFpC), outer tepal length (OTLcm), parianth length with tube (PLWT cm) and weight of stigma (WSTG mg) exhibited low broad-sense heritability. Principal component analysis (PCA) divulged that the first eight component characters had an eigenvalue greater than one with a contributory cumulative variance of 66.15% to the total variance, while as rest of the 16 components contributed 33.85% of total variation in a set of 272 genotypes of saffron. The eigenvalues for yield attributing traits for significant PCs ranged from 5.48 (PC1) to 1.03(PC8). The current study has revealed that there was a sufficient variability in a set of saffron germplasm lines which forms the basis for performance-based clonal selection. Moreover, identified elite genotypes based on saffron yield and corm attributes could be used in the saffron breeding programme for the development of saffron varieties.

The study was undertaken to estimate the genetic parameters of lactation curve parameters of Wood's function in Jersey crossbred cattle using the Bayesian approach. Data on 33,906 fortnightly test day milk yields of 1,718 lactation records of Jersey crossbred cows, maintained at the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute in West Bengal, were collected over a period of 40 years. The lactation curve parameters including ‘a’ (initial milk yield after calving), ‘b’ (ascending slope up to peak yield) and ‘c’ (descending slope after peak yield) and lactation curve traits, peak yield (ymax), time of peak yield (tmax) and persistency of milk yield (P) of individual cow for each lactation were estimated using the incomplete gamma function (Wood's model) by fitting the Gauss–Newton algorithm as an iteration method using PROC NLIN procedure of SAS 9.3. Variance components and genetic parameters of lactation curve parameters/traits were estimated by a repeatability animal model using the Bayesian approach. Estimates of heritabilities were found to be 0.18 ± 0.05, 0.09 ± 0.03 and 0.11 ± 0.04 for parameters ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’, respectively and 0.24 ± 0.05, 0.12 ± 0.04, and 0.15 ± 0.05 for ymax, tmax and P, respectively. Repeatability estimates were 0.31 ± 0.03, 0.21 ± 0.04 and 0.30 ± 0.04 for parameters ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ respectively and 0.39 ± 0.03, 0.24 ± 0.03 and 0.37 ± 0.03 for ymax, tmax and p, respectively. Genetic correlations among lactation curve parameters/traits ranged from −0.75 to 0.95. Existence of genetic correlations among lactation curve parameters/traits indicated substantial genetic and physiological relationships among lactation curve parameters/traits of Jersey crossbred cattle.

This article uses a behavioral genetics approach to study gender differences in expressed political interest, applying the enriched environment hypothesis to gendered political socialization. As girls are less stimulated to develop an interest in politics than boys, we theorize that these differences in the socialization environment reduce the expression of girls’ genetic predispositions compared to boys’, leading to a gender gap in the heritability of this trait. Analyses using data on German twins (11–25 years) demonstrate relevant differences by gender and age in heritability estimates. While differences in political interest between boys are largely explained by genes, this is less the case for girls, as they have considerably higher shared environment estimates. Our results imply that gender differences in expressed political interest are sustained by both genetic variation and environmental influences (such as socialization), as well as the interaction between the two.

Aging plays a crucial role in the mechanisms of the impacts of genetic and environmental factors on blood pressure and serum lipids. However, to our knowledge, how the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the correlation between blood pressure and serum lipids changes with age remains to be determined. In this study, data from the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR) were used. Resting blood pressure, including systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and fasting serum lipids, including total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides (TGs) were measured in 2378 participants (1189 twin pairs). Univariate and bivariate structural equation models examined the genetic and environmental influences on blood pressure and serum lipids among three age groups. All phenotypes showed moderate to high heritability (0.37–0.59) and moderate unique environmental variance (0.30–0.44). The heritability of all phenotypes showed a decreasing trend with age. Among all phenotypes, SBP and DBP showed a significant monotonic decreasing trend. For phenotype-phenotype pairs, the phenotypic correlation (Rph) of each pair ranged from −0.04 to 0.23, and the additive genetic correlation (Ra) ranged from 0.00 to 0.36. For TC&SBP, TC&DBP, TG&SBP and TGs&DBP, both the Rph and Ra declined with age, and the Ra difference between the young group and the older adult group is statistically significant (p < .05). The unique environmental correlation (Re) of each pair did not follow any pattern with age and remained relatively stable with age. In summary, we observed that the heritability of blood pressure was affected by age. Moreover, blood pressure and serum lipids shared common genetic backgrounds, and age had an impact on the phenotypic correlation and genetic correlations.

We examine some of the genetic features of neuroticism (N) taking as an animal model the Maudsley Reactive (MR) and Maudsley Nonreactive (MNR) rat strains which were selectively bred, respectively, for high and low open-field defecation (OFD) starting in the late 1950s. To draw analogies with human genetic studies, we explore the genetic correlation of N with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). We review progress with the rat model and developments in the field of human complex trait genetics, including genetic association studies that relate to current understanding of the genetics of N. The widespread differences in the tone of the peripheral sympathetic nervous system that have been found between the Maudsley strains, particularly those observed in the colon, may underly the differences in OFD (MNR, higher sympathetic tone and zero defecation). In humans, a large genome-wide association study (GWAS) reported six genes contributing to IBS, four of which were implicated in mood and anxiety disorders or were expressed in the brain, with three of the four also expressed in the nerve fibers and ganglia of the gut. Heritability of N is estimated at around 50% in twin and family studies, and GWASs identified hundreds of loci, enabling estimation of genome-wide correlations (rg) with other traits. Significantly, the estimate for rg between risk of IBS, anxiety, N, and depression was >0.5 and suggested genetic pleiotropy without evidence for causal mechanisms. Findings on the adrenergic pharmacology of the colon, coupled with new understanding of the role of the locus ceruleus in modifying afferent information from this organ, generate hypotheses that challenge traditional cause/effect notions about the relationship of the central nervous system to peripheral events in response to stress, suggest specific targets for gene action in the Maudsley model and emphasize the value of reciprocal evaluation of genetic architecture underlying N in rodents and humans.