Selekcija i Semenarstvo (Jan 2010)
The interrelation between plus-hybrid effect on grain yield and genetic distance of studied hybrids
Abstract
The combined effect of cytoplasmic male sterility and xenia is referred to as the Plus-Hybrid effect. A mixture of hybrids, in which one is a sterile female component and the other is a fertile pollinator, was sown. The objective of the present study was to determine whether the increase of a hybrid genetic distance would result in the increased gain from Plus-hybrid effects on grain yield. Two ZP hybrids (ZP 1 and ZP 2), i.e. their sterile and fertile counterparts, as well as, five hybrid pollinators (ZP 1, ZP 2, ZP 3, ZP 4 and ZP 5) were selected for the studies. The three-replicate trail was set up according to the randomized split-plot design at Zemun Polje in 2009. SSR markers were used to determine the genetic distance between hybrids. Ten out of total 12 applied primers gave results. Coefficients of similarity were estimated according to Dice and Jaccard. The greatest (0.37), i.e. smallest genetic distance (0.08), according to Dice, was obtained between hybrids ZP 1 and ZP 5, i.e. ZP 1 and ZP 4, respectively. Values of genetic distance according to Jaccard were between 0.14 (ZP 1 and ZP 4) and 0.54 (ZP 1 i ZP 5 ). By using the cluster analysis, four hybrids (ZP 1, ZP 4, ZP 3 and ZP 2) were grouped into one sub-cluster that was loosely linked to ZP 5. The Plus-hybrid effect on grain yield of the hybrid ZP 1 was negative. The greatest gain was detected in the ZP 2st ' ZP 1 combination, between two hybrids that were genetically very similar and belonged to the same sub-cluster, and then in ZP 2st x ZP 3 and ZP 2st x ZP 4 combinations, between hybrids that also belonged to the same sub-cluster. It can be concluded that the Plus-hybrid effect, after all, depends not on the hybrid genetic distance but on the hybrid genotype.
