Statistics Predicts Hybrid Rice Performance

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.

Read more about this research at: http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/24208.