Growth traits of a tropical timber species at Southeast Asia, Shorea macrophylla, and scripts for genome wide association study and genomic prediction

Shorea macrophylla is a commercially important tropical tree species grown for timber and oil. It is amenable to plantation forestry due to its fast initial growth. Genomic selection (GS) has been used in tree breeding studies to shorten long breeding cycles but has not previously been applied to S. macrophylla. To build genomic prediction models for GS, leaves and growth trait data were collected from a half-sib progeny population of S. macrophylla in Sari Bumi Kusuma forest concession, central Kalimantan, Indonesia. 18037 SNP markers were identified in two ddRAD-seq libraries. Genomic prediction models based on these SNPs were then generated for breast height and total height in the 7th year from planting (D7 and H7). These traits were chosen because of their relatively high narrow-sense genomic heritability and because seven years was considered long enough to assess initial growth. Genomic prediction models were built using 12 methods with the full set of identified SNPs and subsets...