Analysis of the Relationship between Carcass Traits and Linear Body Measurements in Hanwoo Cattle

Abstract Selection emphasis on linear body measurement traits associated with increased lifetime production efficiency may be beneficial to decrease culling and increase profitability in both dairy and beef industry. The importance of knowledge of associations between body measurement and carcass traits is essential to obtain indices in order to increase the response to selection and incorporate these traits in designing a breeding program. Hence, the objective of the present study was to estimate variance components and genetic parameters for linear body measurement and carcass traits in the Hanwoo cattle. Backfat thickness (BFT), carcass weight (CWT), eye muscle area (EMA), and marbling score (MS) at around 24 months of age considered as carcass traits and analyzed 10 body measurement traits at yearling age of Hanwoo were body height (BH), body length (BL), chest depth (CD), chest girth (CG), chest width (CW), hip height (HH), hip width (HW), rump length (RL), rump width (RW), and thurl width (TW). The (co)variance components were estimated using AI-REML in a series of bivariate analyses, which were implemented by the AIREMLF90 software. Moderate to high heritability estimates were found for the carcass traits, which were 0.32, 0.46, 0.50, and 0.61 for CWT, EMA, BFT, and MS, respectively. Heritability estimates for linear body measurement were low to medium, ranging from 0.12 to 0.37. The body measurement traits exhibited moderate to relatively high genetic correlations with CWT, while the genetic correlations of body measurement with the three other carcass traits were very low. The results of this study demonstrated the favorable and positive genetic correlations between linear body measurement and carcass weight, indicating that selection on these traits can be effective in Hanwoo breeding programs without having unfavorable effects on other carcass traits.