GENETIC COMPONENTS FROM FULL, HALF AND QUARTER DIALLELS FOR THE CULTIVATED STRAWBERRY
It is predicted chat satisfactory estimates of genetic variance parameters could be obtained from quarter diallels at a considerable reduction in the cost compared to obtaining similar information from full diallels. It is also predicted that, for breeding procedures designed to exploit all the genetic variance, estimates of genetic progress obtained from half and quarter diallels would be almost identical to those obtained from full diallels.No genetic progress was indicated for strawberry yield for any reasonable selection intensity when only the additive variance was exploited.It is suggested that long-term genetic progress for an economic complex of characters may be obtained by exploiting major gene differences following classical Mendelian principles and using the resulting selections as one source of parents for crosses designed to exploit all the genetic variance – additive, dominant and epistatic.