The Effectiveness of HA-GGE Biplot Application in Analyzing the Data from the National Cotton Cultivar Regional Trial in the Yangtze River Valley

A large number of regional crop trials have demonstrated the ubiquitous existence of genotype × environment interactions (G×E), which make it complicated to select superior cultivars and identify the ideal testing sites. The GGE (genotype main effect plus genotype × environment interaction) biplot is the most powerful statistical and graphical displaying tool available for regional crop trial dataset analysis. The objective of the present study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the biplot in evaluating the high and stable yields of candidate cultivars simultaneously, and in delineating the most adaptive planting region, analyzing trial location discrimination ability and representativeness, and identifying the ideal cultivar and trial locations. The lint cotton yield dataset with nine experimental genotypes and 17 test locations (three replicates in each) was collected from the national cotton regional trial in the Yangtze River Valley (YaRV) in 2012. The results showed that: (1) the effects of genotype (G), environment (E), and genotype × environment interaction (G×E) were significant (P < 0.01) for lint cotton yield. Differences among environments accounted for 78.7% of the treatment total variation in the sum of squares, whereas the genotype main effect accounted for 8.7%, and the genotype × environment interaction accounted for 12.6%. (2) The “ideal cultivar” and “ideal location” view of the HA-GGE biplot identified Zhongcj408 (G2) and Nannon12 (G9) as the best ideal genotypes; Cixi in Zhejiang Province and Jiangling in Hubei Province were the most ideal locations.(3) The “which-won-where” view of the biplot outlined the adaptive planting region for each experimental cultivar. (4) The “similarity among locations” view clustered the trial locations into four groups, among of which the two outlier locations, Shehong (SH) and Chengdu (QBJ), located in Shichuan Basin in the upper reaches of YaRV, were clustered in one group, whereas the Nanyang (NY) of Henan Province at the northern edge of YaRV was singled out as a sole group. Such location clustering results implied an apparent association with the geographical environment.