Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Genetic Components of Variation

The expectations of variances and covariances of metrical characters in genetical experiments may in many cases be expressed (Mather [1949]) as a sum of two genetic components, D measuring additive effects and H measuring dominance effects, together with appropriate environmental components EW , ,Eb etc. If we write c = (D, H, EW, Eb, *.-) for the row vector of components alnd v for the column vector of observed variances and covariances then, in these experiments,