pedigreebased

Pedigreebased, or pedigree-based, refers to approaches that rely on pedigree information—records of familial relationships and ancestry—to infer genetic relationships, estimate heritability, and guide analyses or decision-making across genetics, breeding, and epidemiology. It is used in human genetics, animal and plant breeding, and related fields to exploit known relatedness among individuals.

In statistical genetics, pedigree-based methods use the expected genetic relatedness encoded by a pedigree to partition phenotypic variance and to predict genetic merit. The additive relationship matrix, derived from pedigree data, quantifies how much genetic material two individuals are expected to share. Variance components models and mixed models, such as BLUP (best linear unbiased prediction), can be applied with this matrix to estimate heritability and to predict breeding values. Pedigree information also underpins linkage analyses that track the co-segregation of traits with markers within families.

Applications include animal breeding programs, where pedigreebased analyses help estimate breeding values, optimize selection, and manage inbreeding and genetic diversity. In human genetics and medicine, family history is used to assess lifetime risk for inherited conditions, guide screening strategies, and inform research on gene discovery. Pedigree data also appear in plant and crop breeding to track lineage and inform crossing decisions, particularly when molecular data are limited or unavailable.

Data quality is critical for pedigreebased methods; inaccuracies in pedigrees, non-paternity events, or missing relationships can bias results. Pedigrees can be complemented with genomic information to create integrated approaches (for example, combining pedigree-based and genomic relationship matrices) to improve accuracy and robustness. Limitations include sensitivity to pedigree errors, incomplete records, and the inability of purely pedigree-based methods to capture non-additive genetic effects or de novo mutations.