“… 11 In maize, through a design of multiple linked F 1 populations containing 42,840 F 1 hybrids and genome-wide association study, an instance of epistasis was revealed where one recessive, deleterious maternal allele, Brachytic2 , repressed the favorable Ubiquitin3 locus in the maternal lines, while the paternal allele alleviated this repression and thus recovered plant height and ear weight in hybrids. 10 The genomic architectures of heterosis in rice, maize, wheat, and other crops were also characterized using the population-based method, 6 , 7 , 12 , 13 , 26 , 27 , 44 which uncovered many novel loci functioning in heterosis via dominance, overdominance, and epistasis. These loci were dynamically predominant for different heterotic traits during plant life cycle and could serve as important references for genotype-based parent selection in hybrid breeding ( Figure 1 B).…”