Relationship of parental genetic distance with agronomic performance, specific combining ability, and predicted breeding values of raspberry families

Previous findings in some crops suggest that parental distance is correlated with heterosis and agronomic performance. However, this pattern is not always evident in the progeny. The present study aimed to assess the relationship of parental distance with the agronomic performance of raspberry families and three estimators based on non-environmental effects: specific combining ability, general combining ability, and best linear unbiased prediction. A total of 35 genotypes, including eight open-pollinated raspberry cultivars and their 28 F1 hybrids, were scored for vegetative and fruit traits. The relationship between estimators and parental distance ranged from 0.02 to 0.66. The estimators based on purely additive effects were superior to the per se performance of raspberry crosses. Additionally, it was observed that the specific combining ability—as an estimator associated with the parental genetic relatedness—performed poorly, and low correlation coefficients were observed for most of the traits. It was found that the degree of association for the estimators increased when narrow-sense heritability was high. It is concluded that the estimators based on only additive effects show a better association with parental relatedness, and therefore parental distance was an effective parameter in identifying crosses with high yield and large fruit size.