Heritability estimates and progeny testing of phenotypic selections for soluble solids content in dehydrator onion

Soluble solids comprise most of onion bulb dry mass, and dehydrator onion cultivars are developed from breeding populations that have high dry mass content. Realized and narrow-sense heritability estimates were obtained for the soluble solids content (SSC) trait in two open-pollinated dehydrator onion breeding populations (BP) using response to selection and half-sib family analysis. Parental populations, designated as BP9335-U and BP9243-U, were derived from two-way crosses of lines advanced as open- pollinated (OP) populations to the F7 or F_6 generation, respectively. BP9335-U had one previous selection cycle for increased SSC and BP9243-U had three SSC selection cycles. In these experiments, parental populations were screened again for high SSC, and selected bulbs were intermated to form half-sib progeny groups, designated as BP9335-S and BP9243-S. Mean SSC was increased by 6.6% and a realized heritability estimate of 0.64 was obtained for BP9335-S. Mean SSC was increased by 6.3% and a realized heritability estimate of 0.36 was obtained for BP9243-S. Narrow-sense heritability estimates of 0.58 ±0.05 and 0.30 ±0.03 were obtained for parental populations BP9335-U and BP9243-U, respectively. Narrow-sense heritability estimates of 0.40 ± 0.03 and 0.63 ± 0.23 were obtained for progeny populations derived from selected high-SSC bulbs of these lines (BP9335-S and BP9243-S), respectively, indicating that there is significant additive genetic control of the SSC trait in these populations. Significant differences in half-sib family performance in the advanced groups BP9335-S and BP9243-S demonstrate that progeny testing was effective for evaluating phenotypic selections. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.