Hybrid Plants Perform Better Than Parent Varieties Due to Genetic Composition

Agriculture scientists from Iowa State University revealed why hybrid plants perform better than the parent varieties of the hybrid, according to a news release.

The new study enables scientists to have better understanding in developing precision for plant breeding, according to Jianming Yu, Associate Professor of Agronomy.

In their study, the researchers focused mainly on heterosis, which is a common process that allows many sorghum (grain-like) plants that are bred to perform better than their parent varieties in growth.

Yu, along with his colleagues at Kansas State University, examined how heterosis worked regarding plant height in sorghum plants.

"The mechanisms behind heterosis have been debated for a long time, but there haven't been a lot of concrete answers," said Xin Li, the first author and a graduate student in agronomy.

 "For this paper, we tried to show specifically what is happening with plant height in sorghum. It's an example that illustrates the theory," Li added.

The researchers focused on repulsion phase linkage, which is the link between a dominant allele of one gene with the recessive allele of another gene. Organisms possess a gene which is made up of a dominant allele - which are responsible for the higher expression of hereditary traits - and the recessive allele. By studying the repulsion phase linkage, the researchers were able to determine why a hybrid plant can be taller than the parent varieties.

Yu explained that plants produced from the same parent variety sometimes cancel each other out. By combining the right varieties, the genes can no longer cancel out each other, which allows the hybrid to excel.

This new technique can enable a range of crops to be grown in varieties.

"If you understand the genetics, you don't have to make random crosses of hybrids and see if you get the traits you want," Yu said.

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