Reciprocal recurrent genomic selection: an attractive tool to leverage hybrid wheat breeding

Using a two-part breeding strategy based on a population improvement and a product development component can leverage hybrid wheat breeding. Despite the technological advance of methods to facilitate hybrid breeding in self-pollinating crops, line breeding is still the dominating breeding strategy. This is likely due to a higher long-term selection gain in line compared to hybrid breeding. In this respect, recent studies on two-part strategies splitting the breeding program into a population improvement and a product development component could mark a trend reversal. Here, an overview of experimental and simulation-based studies exploring the possibilities to integrate genome-wide prediction into recurrent selection is given. Furthermore, possibilities to make use of recurrent selection for inter-population improvement are discussed. Current findings of simulation studies and quantitative genetic considerations suggest that long-term selection gain of hybrid breeding can be increased by implementing a two-part selection strategy based on reciprocal recurrent genomic selection. This would strengthen the competitiveness of hybrid versus line breeding facilitating to develop outstanding hybrid varieties also for self-pollinating plants such as wheat.