The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of cytoplasmic lineage on birth weight (BW) and pre weaning average daily gain (ADG), respectively of 4,212 and 3,844 records of Caracu cattle breed. The cytoplasmic lineage of each cow was traced back to the first female ancestor in the maternal line of its pedigree. The estimates of (co) variances and genetic parameters for BW and ADG including or not the components of maternal and cytoplasmic lineage effects, performed by univariate analyses were evaluated according to six different models using the derivative-free restricted maximum likelihood method. The cytoplasmic lineage variance in the two models that included this effect was very low, 0.6172x10-5 and 0.1339x10-5, 0.62557x10-7 and 0.49502x10-7 for BW and ADG, respectively. The cytoplasmic lineage effect could be neglected in the models of BW and ADG of Caracu cattle.
cytoplasmic inheritance; dual purpose cattle; heritability; maternal effect
