A plant breeder is starting a new breeding program to develop paw paw as a new t

Question

A plant breeder is starting a new breeding program to develop paw paw as a new temperate fruit crop. The paw paw is native North American tree. The breeder collects germplasm from several regions in the US and establishes a genetically diverse interbreeding population. The mean yield of this population is 30 kg/tree. He selects the top 20% of the most productive plants and isolates them from the rest of the population to intercross them. The average yield of these plants is 60 kg/tree. He grows out the seed from his crosses and determines that the avaerge yield of his new population is 40 kg/tree. Using this data, please calculate an estimate of narrow sense heritability of the initial population.

Explanation / Answer

This is calculated by the formula

To= Tm+h2(T-Tm) where To is offspring phenotype, Tm is mean phenotype, T is average phenotype of parents and h is heritability

Average Parents phenotype is given as 60 so T = 60, To= 40 kg/tree and Tm = 30 kg/tree.

40 = 30+h2(60-30)

40 = 30 + h2 x 30

30 h2 = 40-30 = 10

h2 = 10/30 = 0.33

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