“…Experiments with perennial species, such as C. arabica , usually present unbalanced data due to adversities in the field over time. Therefore, the use of the mixed models methodology, Residual or Restricted Maximum Likelihood/Best Linear Unbiased Prediction (REML/BLUP) (Patterson and Thompson, 1971; Henderson, 1975) has allowed, from phenotypic information, the accurate, and unbiased prediction of genetic values of individuals (Resende and Thompson, 2004; Viana et al, 2011; Barbosa et al, 2012; Ferreira et al, 2012; Pereira et al, 2013; Corrêa et al, 2015; Spinelli et al, 2015). For coffee, genetic gains have also been reported using molecular markers in studies on genetic diversity (Sousa et al, 2017), genetic maps (Pestana et al, 2015; Moncada et al, 2016), and assisted selection (Alkimim et al, 2017; Favoretto et al, 2017).…”