Accelerating genetic gains for quantitative resistance to verticillium wilt through predictive breeding in strawberry

Abstract

Abstract Verticillium wilt (VW), a devastating vascular wilt disease of strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa), has caused economic losses for nearly a century. This disease is caused by the soil‐borne pathogen Verticillium dahliae, which occurs nearly worldwide and causes disease in numerous agriculturally important plants. The development of VW‐resistant cultivars is critically important for the sustainability of strawberry production. We previously showed that a preponderance of the genetic resources (asexually propagated hybrid individuals) preserved in public germplasm collections were moderately to highly susceptible and that genetic gains for increased resistance to VW have been negligible over the last 60 years. To more fully understand the challenges associated with breeding for increased quantitative resistance to this pathogen, we developed and phenotyped a training population of hybrids (n=564) among elite parents with a wide range of resistance phenotypes. When these data were combined with training data from a population of elite and exotic hybrids (n=386), genomic prediction accuracies of 0.47–0.48 were achieved and were predicted to explain 70%–75% of the additive genetic variance for resistance. We concluded that breeding values for resistance to VW can be predicted with sufficient accuracy for effective genomic selection with routine updating of training populations.