Genomic prediction of grain yield in commercial Finnish oat (Avena sativa) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) breeding programmes

Genomic selection has been adopted in many plant breeding programmes. In this paper, we cover some aspects of information necessary before starting genomic selection. Spring oat and barley breeding data sets from commercial breeding programmes were studied using single, multitrait and trait-assisted models for predicting grain yield. Heritabilities were higher when estimated using multitrait models compared to single-trait models. However, no corresponding increase in prediction accuracy was observed in a cross-validation scenario. On the other hand, forward prediction showed a slight, but not significant, increase in accuracy of genomic estimated breeding values for breeding cohorts when a multitrait model was applied. When a correlated trait was used in a trait-assisted model, on average the accuracies increased by 9%–14% for oat and by 11%–28% for barley compared with a single-trait model. Overall, accuracies in forward validation varied between breeding cohorts and years for grain yield. Forward prediction accuracies for multiple cohorts and multiple years’ data are reported for oat for the first time.