Accuracy of genomic selection to predict maize single-crosses obtained through different mating designs

Testcross is the worst mating design to use as a training set to predict maize single-crosses that would be obtained through full diallel or North Carolina design II. Even though many papers have been published about genomic prediction (GP) in maize, the best mating design to build the training population has not been defined yet. Such design must maximize the accuracy given constraints on costs and on the logistics of the crosses to be made. Hence, the aims of this work were: (1) empirically evaluate the effect of the mating designs, used as training set, on genomic selection to predict maize single-crosses obtained through full diallel and North Carolina design II, (2) and identify the possibility of reducing the number of crosses and parents to compose these training sets. Our results suggest that testcross is the worst mating design to use as a training set to predict maize single-crosses that would be obtained through full diallel or North Carolina design II. Moreover, North Carolina design II is the best training set to predict hybrids taken from full diallel. However, hybrids from full diallel and North Carolina design II can be well predicted using optimized training sets, which also allow reducing the total number of crosses to be made. Nevertheless, the number of parents and the crosses per parent in the training sets should be maximized.