A research team led by plant geneticists at the University of California
Riverside in the United States and Huazhong Agricultural University in China
has used quantitative genetics to predict the performance of hybrid rice.
The team used a statistical approach called genomic prediction to predict
the value of economically important traits in plants such as yield or
disease resistance. The method works if the trait is heritable, as many
traits tend to be, and can be performed early in the life cycle of the
plant, helping reduce costs.

Genomic prediction differs from traditional predictions because it skips the
marker-detection step. The method simply uses all markers of the entire
genome to predict a trait. The study, co-led by UCR genetics Prof. Shizhong
Xu, is a pilot research project on rice. Xu said that the technology can be
easily extended to other crops such as maize

www.isaaa.org