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QuLinePlus: extending plant breeding strategy and genetic model simulation to cross-pollinated populations-case studies in forage breeding.

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.

SUBMITTER: Hoyos-Villegas V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6461948 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Background and aimsTheory predicts that outcrossing should be more prevalent among perennials than annuals, a pattern confirmed by comparative evidence from diverse angiosperm families. However, intraspecific comparisons between annual and perennial populations are few because such variation is uncommon among flowering plants. Here, we test the hypothesis that perennial populations outcross more than annual populations by investigating Incarvillea sinensis, a wide-ranging insect-pollinated herb native to China. The occurrence of both allopatric and sympatric populations allows us to examine the stability of mating system differences between life histories under varying ecological conditions.MethodsWe estimated outcrossing rates and biparental inbreeding in 16 allopatric and five sympatric populations in which both life histories coexisted using 20 microsatellite loci. In each population we measured height, branch number, corolla size, tube length and herkogamy for ~30 individuals. In a sympatric population, we recorded daily flower number, pollinator visitation and the fruit and seed set of annual and perennial plants.Key resultsAs predicted, outcrossing rates (t) were considerably higher in perennial (mean = 0.76) than annual (mean = 0.09) populations. This difference in mating system was also maintained at sympatric sites where plants grew intermixed. In both allopatric and sympatric populations the degree of herkogamy was consistently larger in outcrossing than selfing plants. Perennials were more branched, with more and larger flowers than in annuals. In a sympatric population, annuals had a significantly higher fruit and seed set than perennials.ConclusionsGenetically based differences in herkogamy between annuals and perennials appear to play a key role in governing outcrossing rates in populations, regardless of variation in local ecological conditions. The maintenance of mating system and life history trait differentiation between perennial and annual populations of I. sinensis probably results from correlated evolution in response to local environmental conditions.

Project description:BackgroundConservation of plant genetic resources, including the wild relatives of crops, plays an important and well recognised role in addressing some of the key challenges faced by humanity and the planet including ending hunger and biodiversity loss. However, the genetic diversity and representativeness of ex situ collections, especially that contained in seed collections, is often unknown. This limits meaningful assessments against conservation targets, impairs targeting of future collecting and limits their use. We assessed genetic representation of seed collections compared to source populations for three wild relatives of bananas and plantains. Focal species and sampling regions were M. acuminata subsp. banksii (Papua New Guinea), M. balbisiana (Viet Nam) and M. maclayi s.l. (Bougainville, Papua New Guinea). We sequenced 445 samples using suites of 16-20 existing and newly developed taxon-specific polymorphic microsatellite markers. Samples of each species were from five populations in a region; 15 leaf samples from different individuals and 16 seed samples from one infructescence ('bunch') were analysed for each population.ResultsAllelic richness of seeds compared to populations was 51, 81 and 93% (M. acuminata, M. balbisiana and M. maclayi respectively). Seed samples represented all common alleles in populations but omitted some rarer alleles. The number of collections required to achieve the 70% target of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation was species dependent, relating to mating systems. Musa acuminata populations had low heterozygosity and diversity, indicating self-fertilization; many bunches were needed (> 15) to represent regional alleles to 70%; over 90% of the alleles from a bunch are included in only two seeds. Musa maclayi was characteristically cross-fertilizing; only three bunches were needed to represent regional alleles; within a bunch, 16 seeds represent alleles. Musa balbisiana, considered cross-fertilized, had low genetic diversity; seeds of four bunches are needed to represent regional alleles; only two seeds represent alleles in a bunch.ConclusionsWe demonstrate empirical measurement of representation of genetic material in seeds collections in ex situ conservation towards conservation targets. Species mating systems profoundly affected genetic representation in seed collections and therefore should be a primary consideration to maximize genetic representation. Results are applicable to sampling strategies for other wild species.

Project description:Most of the genomic studies in plants and animals have used additive models for studying genetic parameters and prediction accuracies. In this study, we used genomic models with additive and nonadditive effects to analyze the genetic architecture of growth and wood traits in an open-pollinated (OP) population of Eucalyptus pellita We used two progeny trials consisting of 5742 trees from 244 OP families to estimate genetic parameters and to test genomic prediction accuracies of three growth traits (diameter at breast height - DBH, total height - Ht and tree volume - Vol) and kraft pulp yield (KPY). From 5742 trees, 468 trees from 28 families were genotyped with 2023 pre-selected markers from candidate genes. We used the pedigree-based additive best linear unbiased prediction (ABLUP) model and two marker-based models (single-step genomic BLUP - ssGBLUP and genomic BLUP - GBLUP) to estimate the genetic parameters and compare the prediction accuracies. Analyses with the two genomic models revealed large dominant effects influencing the growth traits but not KPY. Theoretical breeding value accuracies were higher with the dominance effect in ssGBLUP model for the three growth traits. Accuracies of cross-validation with random folding in the genotyped trees have ranged from 0.60 to 0.82 in different models. Accuracies of ABLUP were lower than the genomic models. Accuracies ranging from 0.50 to 0.76 were observed for within family cross-validation predictions with low relationships between training and validation populations indicating part of the functional variation is captured by the markers through short-range linkage disequilibrium (LD). Within-family phenotype predictive abilities and prediction accuracies of genetic values with dominance effects are higher than the additive models for growth traits indicating the importance of dominance effects in predicting phenotypes and genetic values. This study demonstrates the importance of genomic approaches in OP families to study nonadditive effects. To capture the LD between markers and the quantitative trait loci (QTL) it may be important to use informative markers from candidate genes.

Project description:Key messageMating designs determine the realized additive genetic variance in a population sample. Deflated or inflated variances can lead to reduced or overly optimistic assessment of future selection gains. The additive genetic variance [Formula: see text] inherent to a breeding population is a major determinant of short- and long-term genetic gain. When estimated from experimental data, it is not only the additive variances at individual loci (QTL) but also covariances between QTL pairs that contribute to estimates of [Formula: see text]. Thus, estimates of [Formula: see text] depend on the genetic structure of the data source and vary between population samples. Here, we provide a theoretical framework for calculating the expectation and variance of [Formula: see text] from genotypic data of a given population sample. In addition, we simulated breeding populations derived from different numbers of parents (P = 2, 4, 8, 16) and crossed according to three different mating designs (disjoint, factorial and half-diallel crosses). We calculated the variance of [Formula: see text] and of the parameter b reflecting the covariance component in [Formula: see text] standardized by the genic variance. Our results show that mating designs resulting in large biparental families derived from few disjoint crosses carry a high risk of generating progenies exhibiting strong covariances between QTL pairs on different chromosomes. We discuss the consequences of the resulting deflated or inflated [Formula: see text] estimates for phenotypic and genome-based selection as well as for applying the usefulness criterion in selection. We show that already one round of recombination can effectively break negative and positive covariances between QTL pairs induced by the mating design. We suggest to obtain reliable estimates of [Formula: see text] and its components in a population sample by applying statistical methods differing in their treatment of QTL covariances.

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QuLinePlus: extending plant breeding strategy and genetic model simulation to cross-pollinated populations-case studies in forage breeding.

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