Summary
The creation of breeding populations of allogamous plants by intermating diverse sources leads to linkage disequilibrium which is an obstacle to improvement by selection. Selection can help to reduce disequilibrium when epistasis favours recombinant over parental gametes, but there is a risk of the loss of useful alleles because of their association with poor gametes. Mass selection has an advantage over half sib selection when dominance is positive because the preferential selection of double and multiple heterozygotes enhances the opportunities for recombination.
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Wright, A. The effects of half-sib and mass selection on linkage disequilibrium in recurrent selection programmes. Heredity 50, 85–89 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1983.9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1983.9