Genomic Prediction of Testcross Performance in Canola (Brassica napus) (original) (raw)

Genomic Prediction and Genetic Correlation of Agronomic, Blackleg Disease, and Seed Quality Traits in Canola (Brassica napus L.)

Plants

Genomic selection accelerates genetic progress in crop breeding through the prediction of future phenotypes of selection candidates based on only their genomic information. Here we report genetic correlations and genomic prediction accuracies in 22 agronomic, disease, and seed quality traits measured across multiple years (2015–2017) in replicated trials under rain-fed and irrigated conditions in Victoria, Australia. Two hundred and two spring canola lines were genotyped for 62,082 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) using transcriptomic genotype-by-sequencing (GBSt). Traits were evaluated in single trait and bivariate genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) models and cross-validation. GBLUP were also expanded to include genotype-by-environment G × E interactions. Genomic heritability varied from 0.31to 0.66. Genetic correlations were highly positive within traits across locations and years. Oil content was positively correlated with most agronomic traits. Strong, not pr...

Reduction of genotyping marker density for genomic selection is not an affordable approach to long-term breeding in cross-pollinated crops

2021

ABSTRACTThe selection of informative markers has been studied massively as an alternative to reduce genotyping costs for the genomic selection (GS) application. Low-density marker panels are attractive for GS because they decrease computational time-consuming and multicollinearity beyond more individuals can be genotyped with the same cost. Nevertheless, these inferences are usually made empirically using “static” training sets and populations, which are adequate only to predict a breeding program’s initial cycles but might not for long-term cycles. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, none of these inferences considered the inclusion of dominance into the GS models, which is particularly important to predict cross-pollinated crops. Therefore, that reveals an important and unexplored topic for allogamous long-term breeding. To achieve this goal, we employed two approaches: the former used empirical maize datasets, and the latter simulations of long-term breeding cycles of phenoty...

Genomic Selection and Prediction in Plant Breeding

Journal of Crop Improvement, 2011

Genomic selection (GS) has been implemented in animal and plant species, and is regarded as a useful tool for accelerating genetic gains. Varying levels of genomic prediction accuracy have been obtained in plants, depending on the prediction problem assessed and on several other factors, such as trait heritability, the relationship between the individuals to be predicted and those used to train the models for prediction, number of markers, sample size and genotype  environment interaction (GE). The main objective of this article is to describe the results of genomic prediction in International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center's (CIMMYT's) maize and wheat breeding programs, from the initial assessment of the predictive ability of different models using pedigree and marker information to the present, when methods for implementing GS in practical global maize and wheat breeding programs are being studied and investigated. Results show that pedigree (population structure) accounts for a sizeable proportion of the prediction accuracy when a global population is the prediction problem to be assessed. However, when the prediction uses unrelated populations to train the prediction equations, prediction accuracy becomes negligible. When genomic prediction includes modeling GE, an increase in prediction accuracy can be achieved by borrowing information from correlated environments. Several questions on how to incorporate GS into CIMMYT's maize and wheat programs remain unanswered and subject to further investigation, for example, prediction within and between related biparental crosses. Further research on the quantification of breeding value components for GS in plant breeding populations is required.

Genotyping marker density reduction is not an effective approach in long-term prediction-based breeding of cross-pollinated crops

2021

Reductions of genotyping marker density have been extensively evaluated as potential strategies to reduce the genotyping costs of genomic selection (GS). Low-density marker panels are appealing in GS because they entail lower multicollinearity and computational time-consumption and allow more individuals to be genotyped for the same cost. However, statistical models used in GS are usually evaluated with empirical data, using "static" training sets and populations. This may be adequate for making predictions during a breeding program's initial cycles, but not for the long term. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, no GS models consider the effect of dominance, which is particularly important for breeding outcomes in cross-pollinated crops. Hence, dominance effects are an important and unexplored issue in GS for long-term programs involving allogamous species. To address it, we employed two approaches: analysis of empirical maize datasets and simulations of long-term ...

Genomic Prediction of Sunflower Hybrids Oil Content

Frontiers in Plant Science, 2017

Prediction of hybrid performance using incomplete factorial mating designs is widely used in breeding programs including different heterotic groups. Based on the general combining ability (GCA) of the parents, predictions are accurate only if the genetic variance resulting from the specific combining ability is small and both parents have phenotyped descendants. Genomic selection (GS) can predict performance using a model trained on both phenotyped and genotyped hybrids that do not necessarily include all hybrid parents. Therefore, GS could overcome the issue of unknown parent GCA. Here, we compared the accuracy of classical GCA-based and genomic predictions for oil content of sunflower seeds using several GS models. Our study involved 452 sunflower hybrids from an incomplete factorial design of 36 female and 36 male lines. Re-sequencing of parental lines allowed to identify 468,194 non-redundant SNPs and to infer the hybrid genotypes. Oil content was observed in a multi-environment trial (MET) over 3 years, leading to nine different environments. We compared GCA-based model to different GS models including female and male genomic kinships with the addition of the female-by-male interaction genomic kinship, the use of functional knowledge as SNPs in genes of oil metabolic pathways, and with epistasis modeling. When both parents have descendants in the training set, the predictive ability was high even for GCA-based prediction, with an average MET value of 0.782. GS performed slightly better (+0.2%). Neither the inclusion of the female-by-male interaction, nor functional knowledge of oil metabolism, nor epistasis modeling improved the GS accuracy. GS greatly improved predictive ability when one or both parents were untested in the training set, increasing GCA-based predictive ability by 10.4% from 0.575 to 0.635 in the MET. In this scenario, performing GS only considering SNPs in oil metabolic pathways did not improve whole genome GS prediction but increased GCA-based prediction ability by 6.4%. Our results show that GS is a major improvement to breeding efficiency compared to the classical GCA modeling when either one or both parents are not well-characterized. This finding could therefore accelerate breeding through reducing phenotyping efforts and more effectively targeting for the most promising crosses.

Quantitative genetics theory for genomic selection and efficiency of breeding value prediction in open-pollinated populations

To date, the quantitative genetics theory for genomic selection has focused mainly on the relationship between marker and additive variances assuming one marker and one quantitative trait locus (QTL). This study extends the quantitative genetics theory to genomic selection in order to prove that prediction of breeding values based on thousands of single nucleotide poly-morphisms (SNPs) depends on linkage disequilibrium (LD) between markers and QTLs, assuming dominance. We also assessed the efficiency of genomic selection in relation to phenotypic selection, assuming mass selection in an open-pollinated population, all QTLs of lower effect, and reduced sample size, based on simulated data. We show that the average effect of a SNP substitution is proportional to LD measure and to average effect of a gene substitution for each QTL that is in LD with the marker. Weighted (by SNP frequencies) and unweighted breeding value predictors have the same accuracy. Efficiency of genomic selection in relation to phenotypic selection is inversely proportional to heritability. Accuracy of breeding value prediction is not affected by the dominance degree and the method of analysis, however, it is influenced by LD extent and magnitude of additive variance. The increase in the number of markers asymptotically improved accuracy of breeding value prediction. The decrease in the sample size from 500 to 200 did not reduce considerably accuracy of breeding value prediction.

Investigation of the Genetic Diversity and Quantitative Trait Loci Accounting for Important Agronomic and Seed Quality Traits in Brassica carinata

Frontiers in Plant Science, 2017

Brassica carinata (BBCC) is an allotetraploid in Brassicas with unique alleles for agronomic traits and has huge potential as source for biodiesel production. To investigate the genome-wide molecular diversity, population structure and linkage disequilibrium (LD) pattern in this species, we genotyped a panel of 81 accessions of B. carinata with genotyping by sequencing approach DArTseq, generating a total of 54,510 polymorphic markers. Two subpopulations were exhibited in the B. carinata accessions. The average distance of LD decay (r 2 = 0.1) in B subgenome (0.25 Mb) was shorter than that of C subgenome (0.40 Mb). Genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) identified a total of seven markers significantly associated with five seed quality traits in two experiments. To further identify the quantitative trait loci (QTL) for important agronomic and seed quality traits, we phenotyped a doubled haploid (DH) mapping population derived from the "YW" cross between two parents (Y-BcDH64 and W-BcDH76) representing from the two subpopulations. The YW DH population and its parents were grown in three contrasting environments; spring (Hezheng and Xining, China), semi-winter (Wuhan, China), and spring (Wagga Wagga, Australia) across 5 years for QTL mapping. Genetic bases of phenotypic variation in seed yield and its seven related traits, and six seed quality traits were determined. A total of 282 consensus QTL accounting for these traits were identified including nine major QTL for flowering time, oleic acid, linolenic acid, pod number of main inflorescence, and seed weight. Of these, 109 and 134 QTL were specific to spring and semi-winter environment, respectively, while 39 consensus QTL were identified in both contrasting environments. Two QTL identified for linolenic acid (B3) and erucic acid (C7) were validated in the diverse lines used for GWAS. A total of 25 QTL accounting for flowering time, erucic acid, and oleic acid were aligned to the homologous QTL or candidate gene regions in the C genome of B. napus. These results would not only provide insights for genetic improvement of this species, but will also identify useful genetic variation hidden in the C c subgenome of B. carinata to improve canola cultivars.

Genomic Prediction Accuracy of Seven Breeding Selection Traits Improved by QTL Identification in Flax

International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2020

Molecular markers are one of the major factors affecting genomic prediction accuracy and the cost of genomic selection (GS). Previous studies have indicated that the use of quantitative trait loci (QTL) as markers in GS significantly increases prediction accuracy compared with genome-wide random single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. To optimize the selection of QTL markers in GS, a set of 260 lines from bi-parental populations with 17,277 genome-wide SNPs were used to evaluate the prediction accuracy for seed yield (YLD), days to maturity (DTM), iodine value (IOD), protein (PRO), oil (OIL), linoleic acid (LIO), and linolenic acid (LIN) contents. These seven traits were phenotyped over four years at two locations. Identification of quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) for the seven traits was performed using three types of statistical models for genome-wide association study: two SNP-based single-locus (SS), seven SNP-based multi-locus (SM), and one haplotype-block-based mul...