Summary
This investigation concerns the effect of environments on mean plant growth, heritability, and predicted selection-response of metric characters in M. sativa at three locations.
The three natural environment “treatments” (high, medium and low) were determined by the differing degrees of daylight, temperature and moisture available. It is noted that this climatic variation took place within the geographical locations as well.
Mean plant height was significantly lower in the medium and low environments than in the high environment. The heritability estimates ĥ2n of plant growth varied between 0·16 and 0·46 under high and medium treatments at the three locations, but it was reduced to zero by the low treatment.
The family × locality interaction varied between the particular climatic environments.
The expected responses to direct selection were highest in the medium treatment, second highest in the high and lowest in low.
All the predicted responses to direct selection were higher than those to any indirect selection.
Nonetheless indirect selection was found to be advantageous if a particular locality was exposed to frequent environmental stress, provided only that the family × locality interaction was not excessive.
It is concluded from these investigations that unfavourable environmental conditions may severely limit response to selection, while unusually favourable ones may do so to a moderate extent. Therefore judiciously applied indirect selection may yield more genetic progress than direct one in M. sativa populations under certain extreme conditions.
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Daday, H., Binet, F., Grassia, A. et al. The effect of environment on heritability and predicted selection response in Medicago sativa. Heredity 31, 293–308 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1973.87
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1973.87
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