Accuracy of genomic selection for grain yield and agronomic traits in soft red winter wheat

Genomic selection has the potential to increase genetic gains by using molecular markers as predictors of breeding values of individuals. This study evaluated the accuracy of predictions for grain yield, heading date, plant height, and yield components in soft red winter wheat under different prediction scenarios. Response to selection for grain yield was also compared across different selection strategies- phenotypic, marker-based, genomic, combination of phenotypic and genomic, and random selections.

Genomic selection was implemented through a ridge regression best linear unbiased prediction model in two scenarios- cross-validations and independent predictions. Accuracy for cross-validations was assessed using a diverse panel under different marker number, training population size, relatedness between training and validation populations, and inclusion of fixed effect in the model. The population in the first scenario was then trained and used to predict grain yield of biparental populations for independent validations. Using subsets of significant markers from association mapping increased accuracy by 64-70% for grain yield but resulted in lower accuracy for traits with high heritability such as plant height. Increasing size of training population resulted in an increase in accuracy, with maximum values reached when ~ 60% of the lines were used as a training panel. Predictions using related subpopulations also resulted in higher accuracies. Inclusion of major growth habit genes as fixed effect in the model caused increase in grain yield accuracy under a cross-validation procedure. Independent predictions resulted in accuracy ranging between - 0.14 and 0.43, dependent on the grouping of site-year data for the training and validation populations. Genomic selection was "superior" to marker-based selection in terms of response to selection for yield. Supplementing phenotypic with genomic selection resulted in approximately 10% gain in response compared to using phenotypic selection alone.

Our results showed the effects of different factors on accuracy for yield and agronomic traits. Among the factors studied, training population size and relatedness between training and validation population had the greatest impact on accuracy. Ultimately, combining phenotypic with genomic selection would be relevant for accelerating genetic gains for yield in winter wheat.