title: Metabolic prediction of important agronomic traits in hybrid rice (Oryza sativa L.).
abstract: Hybrid crops have contributed greatly to improvements in global food and fodder production over the past several decades. Nevertheless, the growing population and changing climate have produced food crises and energy shortages. Breeding new elite hybrid varieties is currently an urgent task, but present breeding procedures are time-consuming and labour-intensive. In this study, parental metabolic information was utilized to predict three polygenic traits in hybrid rice. A complete diallel cross population consisting of eighteen rice inbred lines was constructed, and the hybrids' plant height, heading date and grain yield per plant were predicted using 525 metabolites. Metabolic prediction models were built using the partial least square regression method, with predictive abilities ranging from 0.858 to 0.977 for the hybrid phenotypes, relative heterosis, and specific combining ability. Only slight changes in predictive ability were observed between hybrid populations, and nearly no changes were detected between reciprocal hybrids. The outcomes of prediction of the three highly polygenic traits demonstrated that metabolic prediction was an accurate (high predictive abilities) and efficient (unaffected by population genetic structures) strategy for screening promising superior hybrid rice. Exploitation of this pre-hybridization strategy may contribute to rice production improvement and accelerate breeding programs.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Zhiwu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Guoxin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Renshan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Yingguo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.|Engineering Research Center for Plant Biotechnology and Germplasm Utilization, Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
authors.forename: Wenchao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D018745:Genome, Plant; D006824:Hybridization, Genetic; D055442:Metabolome; D012275:Oryza / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D010641:Phenotype; D000069600:Plant Breeding; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci