Abstract

Plant breeders are supported by a range of tools that assist them to make decisions about the conduct or design of plant breeding programs. Simulations are a strategic tool that enables the breeder to integrate the multiple components of a breeding program into a number of proposed scenarios that are compared by a range of statistics measuring the efficiency of the proposed systems. A simulation study for the trait growth score compared two major strategies for breeding forage species, among half-sib family selection and among and within half-sib family selection. These scenarios highlighted new features of the QuLine program, now called QuLinePlus, incorporated to enable the software platform to be used to simulate breeding programs for cross-pollinated species. Each strategy was compared across three levels of half-sib family mean heritability (0.1, 0.5, and 0.9), across three sizes of the initial parental population (10, 50, and 100), and across three genetic effects models (fully additive model, a mixture of additive, partial and over dominance model, and a mixture of partial dominance and over dominance model). Among and within half-sib selection performed better than among half-sib selection for all scenarios. The new tools introduced into QuLinePlus should serve to accurately compare among methods and provide direction on how to achieve specific goals in the improvement of plant breeding programs for cross breeding species.

Highlights

  • IntroductionCultivar development in a plant breeding program is a complex process involving a cyclical procedure over long periods

  • Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Cultivar development in a plant breeding program is a complex process involving a cyclical procedure over long periods

  • The changes in heritability had a larger impact on genetic gain of AWHS than among half-sib family selection (AHS), especially for the first cycle

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Summary

Introduction

Cultivar development in a plant breeding program is a complex process involving a cyclical procedure over long periods. Computer simulation can be a tool for plant breeders to efficiently examine breeding strategies for their breeding program and to make critical decisions (Sun et al 2011). Among other criteria, plant breeders to evaluate long-term effects of their breeding program. Information such as optimum parent population size, number of selection cycles needed to achieve maximum genetic potential, rates of accumulation of favorable alleles, rates of allele fixation, and the influence of breeding method on these outcomes, will help in developing breeding programs

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