Features

VCE completely rewritten in Fortran90

comes as executables ready to run
controlled by intuitive parameter file
sports two methods:
- does REML optimization with a quasi-Newton procedure using analytical gradients (AG) (i.e. exact first derivatives based on the sparse inverse)
- estimates (co)variance components with Gibbs sampling (GI)
very flexible model definition such as:
- animal model
- sire model
- repeatability model
- maternal effects model (correlated random effects)

inbreeding considered as a default
genetic groups (phantom parents)
restart facility after abort
starting values can override the defaults
multiple trait
different model for each trait
random regression models
dominance models
optimization ensured to stay within the parameter space
no built in limit regarding number of traits, effects (fixed and random), regression which can be nested in another fixed effect
automatic reparameterization of rank deficient models to full rank models based on the Cholesky factorization
listing of dependent equations