The HFV study showed that heterosis effects were
favorable for stabilizing milk and growth performances
and functional traits in SMR. Based on the experimental
design and approached methods of analysis,
it can be concluded that there was no overestimation
of additive and heterosis effects based on the simple
dominance model. Models incorporating epistasis or
recombination loss could provide more detailed information
for the long-term selection response, but the
lack of sufficient backcrosses limited reliable results.
Modeling epistasis is far from being a trivial concern
and has been under focus in even more theoretically
oriented research teams up to now (Melchinger et al.,
2007).