Gerechte-Based Mating-Environmental Designs for Varietal Improvement

Abstract

Diallel crosses are important mating designs used to study and gain useful information to enhance genetic traits in crops. Due to the scarcity of resource availability, one can use a fraction of these crosses, i.e., partial diallel crosses (PDCs), which enlarges the applicability of mating designs. A more suitable design for breeding experiments is mating-environmental design, or ME design, which can be used both as a mating and an environmental design. It is interesting to explore the possibility of obtaining efficient ME designs from Gerechte designs (possessing excellent mathematical properties) as base designs. Gerechte design is an extension of a conventional Latin square design, which has every symbol/treatment in each row, column, and region at most once. In this study, three construction methods for diallel cross experiments have been developed that yield highly efficient designs for a wide range of parametric combinations. An R package is also developed for the generation, categorization, and analysis of proposed designs to enhance the application potential.