Importance of heritability

• Estimates of heritability serve as an index of the relative contribution of genotype and environment to the phenotypic variance for the concerned trait in a population.
• A high estimate of heritability indicates a relatively low contribution of environmental factors to the phenotypic variance, while low heritability estimate show a high contribution of environment.
• So, selection would be more effective for characters having high heritability than for those exhibiting low heritability of other relevant parameters were comparable.

Assumptions in heritability estimation

• There is no inbreeding.
• There should be no selection of data.
• There is no genotype-environmental correlation.
• There should be no genotype-environment interaction.