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Increasing genomic prediction accuracy for unphenotyped full-sib families by modeling additive and dominance effects with large datasets in white spruce

Summary

Published in Frontiers in Plant Science 14: 1-24. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1137834

Introduction: Genomic selection is becoming a standard technique in plant breeding and is now being introduced into forest tree breeding. Despite promising results to predict the genetic merit of superior material based on their additive breeding values, many studies and operational programs still neglect non-additive effects and their potential for enhancing genetic gains.

Methods: Using two large comprehensive datasets totaling 4,066 trees from 146 full-sib families of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss), we evaluated the effect of the inclusion of dominance on the precision of genetic parameter estimates and on the accuracy of conventional pedigree-based (ABLUP-AD) and genomic-based (GBLUP-AD) models.

Results: While wood quality traits were mostly additively inherited, considerable non-additive effects and lower heritabilities were detected for growth traits. For growth, GBLUP-AD better partitioned the additive and dominance effects into roughly equal variances, while ABLUP-AD strongly overestimated dominance. The predictive abilities of breeding and total genetic value estimates were similar between ABLUP-AD and GBLUP-AD when predicting individuals from the same families as those included in the training dataset. However, GBLUP-AD outperformed ABLUP-AD when predicting for new unphenotyped families that were not represented in the training dataset, with, on average, 22% and 53% higher predictive ability of breeding and genetic values, respectively. Resampling simulations showed that GBLUP-AD required smaller sample sizes than ABLUP-AD to produce precise estimates of genetic variances and accurate predictions of genetic values. Still, regardless of the method used, large training datasets were needed to estimate additive and non-additive genetic variances precisely.

Discussion: This study highlights the different quantitative genetic architectures between growth and wood traits. Furthermore, the usefulness of genomic additive-dominance models for predicting new families should allow practicing mating allocation to maximize the total genetic values for the propagation of elite material.

Sector(s): 

Forests

Categorie(s): 

Scientific Article

Theme(s): 

Forest Genetics, Forestry Research, Forests

Departmental author(s): 

Perron, Martin

Author(s)

NADEAU, Simon, Jean BEAULIEU, Salvador A. GEZAN, Martin PERRON, J. BOUSQUET and Patrick LENZ

Year of publication :

2023

Format :

PDF

Keywords :

génétique forestière, forest genetic, article scientifique, scientific article, genomic selection (GS), non-additive genetic effects, picea glauca, conifers, GBLUP, tree breeding programs, sélection par la génomique, effet génétique non-additif, épinette blanche, conifères, amélioration génétique, valeur d'amélioration

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