title: Genomic and metabolic prediction of complex heterotic traits in hybrid maize.
abstract: Maize is both an exciting model organism in plant genetics and also the most important crop worldwide for food, animal feed and bioenergy production. Recent genome-wide association and metabolic profiling studies aimed to resolve quantitative traits to their causal genetic loci and key metabolic regulators. Here we present a complementary approach that exploits large-scale genomic and metabolic information to predict complex, highly polygenic traits in hybrid testcrosses. We crossed 285 diverse Dent inbred lines from worldwide sources with two testers and predicted their combining abilities for seven biomass- and bioenergy-related traits using 56,110 SNPs and 130 metabolites. Whole-genome and metabolic prediction models were built by fitting effects for all SNPs or metabolites. Prediction accuracies ranged from 0.72 to 0.81 for SNPs and from 0.60 to 0.80 for metabolites, allowing a reliable screening of large collections of diverse inbred lines for their potential to create superior hybrids.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Breeding, Seed Science and Population Genetics, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Riedelsheimer
authors.forename: Angelika
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Czedik-Eysenberg
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Grieder
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lisec
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Technow
authors.forename: Ronan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sulpice
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Altmann
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stitt
authors.forename: Lothar
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Willmitzer
authors.forename: Albrecht E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Melchinger
mesh_terms: D002678:Chimera / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004734:Energy Metabolism / Q000235:genetics; D005819:Genetic Markers; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D023281:Genomics; D006823:Hybrid Vigor / Q000235:genetics*; D055432:Metabolomics; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D003313:Zea mays / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers