One Hundred Years of Progress and Pitfalls: Maximising Heterosis through Increasing Multi-Locus Nuclear Heterozygosity.

Abstract

The improvement in quantitative traits (e.g., yield, size) in F1 offspring over parent lines is described as hybrid vigour, or heterosis. There exists a fascinating relationship between parental genetic distance and genome dosage (polyploidy), and heterosis effects. The contribution of nuclear heterozygosity to heterosis is not uniform across diploid and polyploid crops, even within same species, thus demonstrating that polyploid crops should be part of any discussion on the mechanisms of heterosis. This review examines the records of correlating heterosis with parental genetic distance and the influence of adding supplementary genomes in wide crosses. Increasing nuclear heterozygosity through parental genetic distance has been shown to be an imperfect predictor for heterosis in a variety of commercial crops such as maize, rice, and pepper. However, increasing the ploidy level raises the maximum number of alleles that can be harboured at any one locus, and studies on crops such as oilseed rape, potato, alfalfa, maize, and rice have demonstrated that heterosis may be maximised upon increasing multi-locus nuclear heterozygosity. The novel heterotic phenotypes observed above the diploid level will contribute to our understanding on the mechanisms of heterosis and aid plant breeders in achieving the righteous goal of producing more food with fewer inputs.