Genomic analysis and prediction within a US public collaborative winter wheat regional testing nursery

The development of inexpensive, whole-genome profiling enables a transition to allele-based breeding using genomic prediction models. These models consider alleles shared between lines to predict phenotypes and select new lines based on estimated breeding values. This approach can leverage highly-unbalanced datasets common to breeding programs. The Southern Regional Performance Nursery (SRPN) is a public nursery established by the USDA-ARS in 1931 to characterize performance and quality of near-release wheat varieties from breeding programs in the US Central Plains. New entries are submitted annually and can be reentered only once. The trial is grown at more than 30 locations each year and lines are evaluated for grain yield, disease resistance, and agronomic traits. Overall genetic gain is measured across years by including common check cultivars for comparison. We have generated whole-genome profiles via genotyping-by-sequencing for 939 SPRN entries dating back to 1992. We measured ...