Multivariate Analyses to Display Interactions between Environment and General or Specific Combining Ability in Hybrid Crops

Abstract

Estimates of general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) help plant breeders devise breeding and selection strategies. The objective of this paper was to apply two‐mode principal component analysis (PCA) to environment‐centered and normalized female (F) or male (M) × environment (E) tables and three‐mode PCA on F × M × E tables to display the variability associated with GCA, SCA, and their interactions with environments. A sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) North Carolina Design II (4 females × 4 males) was grown in 11 environments in Argentina. Site regression (SREG2) and additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI2) models identified lines with high GCA and SCA. The two‐ and three‐mode PCAs revealed GCA × E and SCA × E interactions and were able to identify the best tester for either broad or specific adaptation. Two combinations of analyses accounted for all sources of variation. In Strategy 1 (explaining 59% of the genotype (G) + G × E interaction), two‐mode PCA displayed GCA + SCA while three‐mode PCA displayed GCA × E + SCA × E interactions. Strategy 2 (77%) used two‐mode PCA to display GCA + GCA × E interaction and three‐mode PCA to display SCA + SCA × E interaction. Both strategies were suitable approaches to understand the combining ability of the core germplasm of a hybrid crop breeding program and allowed decisions to be made about the required focus on line development within sub‐regions encompassed by the program.

Trends in Research using Plant Genetic Resources from Germplasm Collections: From 1996 to 2006

“…In developing countries, 69% of the institutions were universities and 27% NARCs; only seven private companies were found (4%), of which one was located in Brazil (Pinto et al, 2006), one in South Africa (Heyns et al, 2006), one in Argentina (De La Vega and Chapman 2006), one in India (Mishra et al, 2006), and three in the Czech Republic (Ř epková et al, 2006;Treuren et al, 2006;Watanabe et al, 2006) (Table 2). The survey identified five published articles based on research undertaken by a private company using germplasm from its own collection (De la Vega and Chapman, 2006;Guo et al, 2006;Hassani et al, 2006;Kiwa et al, 2006;Pinto et al, 2006).…”

High infraspecific diversity of wild sunflowers (Helianthus annuus L.) naturally developed in central Argentina

“…It is unknown how in the following 60 years the wild sunflower spread throughout central Argentina and colonized well-defined agro-ecological habitats . At present, the wild populations are mostly located west of the more suitable area for the sunflower crop (de la Vega and Chapman, 2006).…”

Genomic prediction of sunflower hybrid performance

“…, Laureti and Del Gatto , Ortis et al. , De la Vega and Chapman ) to a predominance of (e.g. Mijic et al.…”