Hybrid breeding in wheat

Jochen C. Reif

Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK)

Advantages of hybrids versus line varieties

• Enhanced yield stability• Increased abiotic and biotic stress resistance• Yield increase due to exploitation of heterosis

Female parent Male parent

Hybrid

Public-private partnership for hybrid wheat research

Plant material:120 female and 15 male lines have been crossed using a factorial mating design. From 1.604 (89%) hybrids enough seed was harvested for phenotyping.

Zhao et al. 2013

Diverse sample of 135 parents

Gowda et al. 2013

Phenotyping at multi-location field trials

Hybrids are more yield stable than lines

Mühleisen et al. 2013

Increased abiotic and biotic stress resistance

Longin et al. 2013

Hybrids show high commercial heterosis

Strong demand for methods to predict hybrid performance

Predicting F1 with midparent performance

Genomic selection (GS)

1 Training Population Phenotyping GS Model: μEstimate marker

effect:

Untested genotype

Genotyping

Predict genomic values:

Cross-validation

Predicting grain yield performance

GS versus midparent based F1 prediction

Traits, which are difficult to phenotype

Hybrid wheat breeding using GS

17

Marker-assisted hybrid wheat breeding

18

Dominance effects in wheat

Gowda et al. Heredity doi 10.1038/hdy.2013.139.

19

Exploiting dominance in hybrids

Gowda et al. Heredity doi 10.1038/hdy.2013.139.

Summary

Hybrid wheat is a promising approach to increase grain yield, yield stability, and abiotic and biotic stress resistance

Genomic selection is a valuable tool to predict hybrid performance

Marker-assisted selection enables a sophisticated exploitation of dominance effects

Female parent Male parent

Hybrid

Thank you for your interest!

Pictures: Frank Schröder

KWS LOCHOW GmbH:Erhard Ebmeyer, Viktor Korzun, Sonja Kollers

Lantmännen SW Seed Hadmersleben GmbH:Ebrahim Kazman

Nordsaat Saatzuchtgesellschaft mbH:Ralf Schachschneider, Martin Kirchhoff

Limagrain GmbH:Johannes Schacht, Jean-Pierre Martinant

University of Hohenheim:Friedrich Longin, Manje Gowda,Jonathan Mühleisen

IPK:Yusheng Zhao, Florian Mette