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Hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals

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Abstract

Hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals has a long history of attempts with moderate success. There is a vast amount of literature investigating the potential problems and solutions, but until now, market share of hybrids is still a niche compared to line varieties. Our aim was to summarize the status quo of hybrid breeding efforts for the autogamous cereals wheat, rice, barley, and triticale. Furthermore, the research needs for a successful hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals are intensively discussed. To our opinion, the basic requirements for a successful hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals are fulfilled. Nevertheless, optimization of the existing hybridization systems is urgently required and should be coupled with the development of clear male and female pool concepts. We present a quantitative genetic framework as a first step to compare selection gain of hybrid versus line breeding. The lack of precise empirical estimates of relevant quantitative genetic parameters, however, is currently the major bottleneck for a robust evaluation of the potential of hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals.

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Acknowledgments

M. Gowda was supported by BMBF within the HYWHEAT project (Grant ID FKZ0315945D). J. Mühleisen was supported by BMELV/BLE within the „Züchtung von Triticalesorten für extreme Umwelten – eine Frage des Sortentyps?“project (Grant ID 2814502410). H. L. Zhang was supported by NSFC (Grant ID 31171613) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant ID 2010CB125904). Furthermore, we thank Dr. Karim Ammar, CIMMYT, Dr. Erhard Ebmeyer, KWS Lochow GmbH, Prof. Hartwig H. Geiger, University of Hohenheim, Dr. Ibrahim Kazman, Lantmännen SW Seed Hadmersleben GmbH, Dr. Volker Lein, Saaten Union Recherche, Dr. Ralf Schachschneider, Nordsaat Saatzuchtgesellschaft mbH, Dr. Johannes Schacht, Limagrain GmbH, Dr. Gunther Stiewe, Syngenta, Dr. Sigrid Weissmann and Dr. Elmar Weissmann, Saatzucht Dr. Hege GbR and Dr. F. Xie, IRRI for their valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions in improving the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Plant Breeding Institute, University of Hohenheim, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Carl Friedrich Horst Longin, Jonathan Mühleisen, Hans Peter Maurer, Manje Gowda & Jochen Christoph Reif

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Hongliang Zhang

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  1. Carl Friedrich Horst Longin
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  2. Jonathan Mühleisen
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Correspondence to Carl Friedrich Horst Longin.

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Communicated by R. Varshney.

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Appendix

Selection gain was calculated based on the formula of Cochran (1951). There is a lack of robust information on variance components, correlations, and other parameters relevant to the calculation of selection gain. As our aim was to roughly investigate trends in hybrid and line breeding, we assumed a selection intensity (i) and square root of heritability (h) of i = h = 1 and modified only the genetic variance by assuming \( \sigma_{G}^{2} ({\text{line}}) = 1 \), while \( \sigma_{G}^{2} ({\text{hybrid}}) \) was either \( 0.5\sigma_{G}^{2} ({\text{line}}) \) or \( 0.9\sigma_{G}^{2} ({\text{line}}) \). For the factorial crosses, we assumed that the budget was 20 % of that of a line breeding program (Longin et al. 2007) and that \( \sigma_{\text{SCA}}^{2} \) amounted to 20 % of the total genetic variance and calculated it as an additional one-stage selection gain. Selection gain across time was calculated as the sum of the single selection cycles, assuming that all variances were constant across years. The selection gain of the factorials, however, was only added once after each selection cycle.

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Longin, C.F.H., Mühleisen, J., Maurer, H.P. et al. Hybrid breeding in autogamous cereals. Theor Appl Genet 125, 1087–1096 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-012-1967-7

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