Prediction of barley progeny performance in the presence of genotype-environment interaction

Abstract

Twenty recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations of European two-row spring barley and their parents were tested in six environments in the Netherlands to investigate the prediction of progeny yield level, yield variance, stability level and stability variance, based on parent information. Progeny yield level is positively correlated with midparent value for average yield. Progeny yield variance is more difficult to predict, but there does appear to be a promising negative correlation between progeny yield variance and Habgood's (1977) parental similarity measure. To quantify yield stability, three statistics were calculated: Finlay and Wilkinson's (1963) regression coefficient bi, Shukla's (1972) stability variance i2 and Eberhart and Russell's (1966) mean squared deviation di2. The first stability statistic describes a different aspect of the response pattern to change in environment from the last two. Parents with high bi values appear to have a better average yield, i.e. they react more positively to an improvement in the environment than the other genotypes. The average bi value of the progeny is positively correlated with the midparent value, indicating its heritable nature. There are also indications that di2 and i2 are heritable but their repeatability is poor. Therefore, it is concluded that only prediction of bi is useful in practical plant breeding. There is a positive correlation between progeny yield variance and progeny variance for bi but we conclude that the inaccuracy of the stability variance estimates is too high for good predictors for progeny stability variance to be found.