Heritability of yield, lint percentage and fibre quality traits
Broad sense heritability estimates were relatively high for all traits (Table 3). The three year estimate provided the highest values for all traits except yield which was highest in the 2012–13 season and LP which had the same heritability in the third year and three
year estimate. For the three year estimate, fibre elongation had the highest heritability estimates at 0.99 followed by length (0.94) and micronaire (0.90). These were followed by YQI, fineness, strength and LP which were above 0.80. Comparing the progeny row estimate to the three year estimate, fineness increased the most by 0.49 (0.38–0.87) followed by an increase of 0.33 (0.57–0.90) for micronaire, indicating fineness and micronaire values in PR were more variable (Table 3) and not always consistent with replicated data.