The effect of linkage on additive genetic variance with inbreeding an F2

Abstract

The effects of linkage on the additive genetical variation among inbred lines produced by single seed descent (SSD) from an F2 is investigated numerically with five and ten gene models. Although considerable bias can be generated by linkage, the additive genetical variation present after one round of random mating is shown to approximate closely to that among the SSD lines over a wide range of gene distributions and would thus be a reliable estimator for breeding purposes. Simple experimental methods of estimating this variance are discussed.