Optimisation of the initial stages of the New South Wales selection program : SRDC final project report BS96S

Abstract

The main aim of this project was to obtain the basic information required to implement an efficient and effective breeding and selection program in NSW. However, the project suffered major difficulties that affected the delivery of the proposed objectives. In spite of this, useful information that will have impact on the NSW selection program was obtained from the available data. In areas where two-year crops predominate, selection from Stage 1 and Stage 2 trials should be applied based on the data from two-year old crops. In addition, there was a strong correlation between the estimated net merit grade (NMGVol) and calculated net merit grade (NMG) in both the one-year and two-year Stage 2 crops at Broadwater. The correlation between the one-year NMGVol and the two-year NMG, however, was not significant. The results also show that family selection combined with visual selection in Stage 2 was generally more effective to identify elite clones in Stage 3 than family selection alone. Additionally, when the Brix of clones was taken into account the efficiency of identifying elite clones was increased even further.