Journal article

Prospects for genomic selection in forage plant species

Benjamin J Hayes, Noel OI Cogan, Luke W Pembleton, Michael E Goddard, Junping Wang, German C Spangenberg, John W Forster

PLANT BREEDING | WILEY | Published : 2013

Abstract

Genomic selection (GS) is a powerful method for exploitation of DNA sequence polymorphisms in breeding improvement, through the prediction of breeding values based on all markers distributed genome-wide. Forage grasses and legumes provide important targets for GS implementation, as many key traits are difficult or expensive to assess, and are measured late in the breeding cycle. Generic attributes of forage breeding programmes are described, along with status of genomic resources for a representative species group (ryegrasses). Two schemes for implementing GS in ryegrass breeding are described. The first requires relatively little modification of current schemes, but could lead to significan..

View full abstract

University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support from the Victorian Department of Primary Industries. Research in genomics-assisted breeding of temperate forage species has been funded by Dairy Australia, the Geoffrey Gardiner Dairy Foundation and Meat and Livestock Australia through the Molecular Plant Breeding and Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centres.