Overall heritability in popcorn estimated by meta-analysis

Luiz Rafael Clóvis,Renan Santos Uhdre,Ronald José Barth Pinto,Jocimar Costa Rosa,Marcelo Vivas,Antônio Teixeira Do Amaral Júnior,Hugo Zeni Neto

doi:10.4025/actasciagron.v43i1.53721

Luiz Rafael Clóvis, Renan Santos Uhdre + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4025/actasciagron.v43i1.53721

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Abstract

The objective of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis and test its efficiency in summarizing the heterogeneous data of heritability estimates for the traits of grain yield (GY) and popping expansion (PE), and to provide reliable estimates of selection gains in popcorn. Therefore, 97 heritability estimates ( ) for popcorn GY and PE in the broad and narrow sense were used. The main procedures underlying the estimation of the combined heritability ( ) using the technique of meta-analysis consisted of i) an exploratory analysis of the set of heritability estimates to detect outliers using a box-plot chart, ii) the verification of the required statistical assumptions, iii) testing the involved heritability estimates for homogeneity, and iv) the calculation of the estimates of combined heritability. The meta-analysis facilitated the synthesis of the information pertaining to heritability in popcorn. The combined heritability estimates ( ) in the broad sense for GY and PE were 0.5208 ± 0.0229 and 0.6356 ± 0.0209, respectively, and in the narrow sense were 0.3290 ± 0.0292 and 0.3083 ± 0.0298, respectively.

Highlights

The concept of heritability (h2), introduced to distinguish genetic and non-genetic differences among plants, is fundamental in popcorn breeding programs to guide decisions related to the selection method applied, traits selected in the early and advanced stages of the program, and the estimation of genetic gains
Heritability reflects the inheritable proportion of phenotypic variation, that is, it quantifies the reliability of the phenotypic value as a guide to the genetic value
The objective of this study was to apply the methodology of meta-analysis to the problem of testing the efficiency of summarizing information from heritability estimates (ĥ2) in the broad and narrow sense, for grain yield (GY) and Popping expansion (PE), to provide reliable estimates of heritability

Summary

Introduction

The concept of heritability (h2), introduced to distinguish genetic and non-genetic differences among plants, is fundamental in popcorn breeding programs to guide decisions related to the selection method applied, traits selected in the early and advanced stages of the program, and the estimation of genetic gains. According to Fehr (1993), high heritability indicates that selection in the early generations of selfing is effective, whereas low heritability indicates that selection should only be applied in the more advanced generations as an increase in homozygosis increases narrow-sense heritability. The phenotypic value of a plant is measurable, but it is the genetic value that will influence the generation. Two types of heritability can be estimated: heritability in the broad sense (ha2), defined as the ratio of genotypic to phenotypic variance, and in the narrow sense (hr2), defined as the ratio of additive genetic to phenotypic variance (Allard, 1971)

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