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    Extensions of genomic prediction methods and approaches for plant breeding
    (2013) Technow, Frank; Melchinger, Albrecht E.
    Marker assisted selection (MAS) was a first attempt to exploit molecular marker information for selection purposes in plant breeding. The MAS approach rested on the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL). Because of inherent shortcomings of this approach, MAS failed as a tool for improving polygenic traits, in most instances. By shifting focus from QTL identification to prediction of genetic values, a novel approach called 'genomic selection', originally suggested for breeding of dairy cattle, presents a solution to the shortcomings of MAS. In genomic selection, a training population of phenotyped and genotyped individuals is used for building the prediction model. This model uses the whole marker information simultaneously, without a preceding QTL identification step. Genetic values of selection candidates, which are only genotyped, are then predicted based on that model. Finally, the candidates are selected according their predicted genetic values. Because of its success, genomic selection completely revolutionized dairy cattle breeding. It is now on the verge of revolutionizing plant breeding, too. However, several features set apart plant breeding programs from dairy cattle breeding. Thus, the methodology has to be extended to cover typical scenarios in plant breeding. Providing such extensions to important aspects of plant breeding are the main objectives of this thesis. Single-cross hybrids are the predominant type of cultivar in maize and many other crops. Prediction of hybrid performance is of tremendous importance for identification of superior hybrids. Using genomic prediction approaches for this purpose is therefore of great interest to breeders. The conventional genomic prediction models estimate a single additive effect per marker. This was not appropriate for prediction of hybrid performance because of two reasons. (1) The parental inbred lines of single-cross hybrids are usually taken from genetically very distant germplasm groups. For example, in hybrid maize breeding in Central Europe, these are the Dent and Flint heterotic groups, separated for more than 500 years. Because of the strong divergence between the heterotic groups, it seemed necessary to estimate heterotic group specific marker effects. (2) Dominance effects are an important component of hybrid performance. They had to be included into the prediction models to capture the genetic variance between hybrids maximally. The use of different heterotic groups in hybrid breeding requires parallel breeding programs for inbred line development in each heterotic group. Increasing the training population size with lines from the opposite heterotic group was not attempted previously. Thus, a further objective of this thesis was to investigate whether an increase in the accuracy of genomic prediction can be achieved by using combined training sets. Important traits in plant breeding are characterized by binomially distributed phenotypes. Examples are germination rate, fertility rates, haploid induction rate and spontaneous chromosome doubling rate. No genomic prediction methods for such traits were available. Therefore, another objective was to provide methodological extensions for such traits. We found that incorporation of dominance effects for genomic prediction of maize hybrid performance led to considerable gains in prediction accuracy when the variance attributable to dominance effects was substantial compared to additive genetic variance. Estimation of marker effects specific to the Dent and Flint heterotic group was of less importance, at least not under the high marker densities available today. The main reason for this was the surprisingly high linkage phase consistency between Dent and Flint heterotic groups. Furthermore, combining individuals from different heterotic groups (Flint and Dent) into a single training population can result in considerable increases in prediction accuracy. Our extensions of the prediction methods to binomially distributed data yielded considerably higher prediction accuracies than approximate Gaussian methods. In conclusion, the developed extensions of prediction methods (to hybrid prediction and binomially distributed data) and approaches (training populations combining heterotic groups) can lead to considerable, cost free gains in prediction accuracy. They are therefore valuable tools for exploiting the full potential of genomic selection in plant breeding.