Accuracies Of Univariate And Multivariate Genomic Prediction Models In African Cassava.
List of abbreviations\n\nAbstractO_ST_ABSBackgroundC_ST_ABSGenomic selection (GS) promises to accelerate genetic gain in plant breeding programs especially for long cycle crops like cassava. To practically implement GS in cassava breeding, it is useful to evaluate different GS models and to develop suitable models for an optimized breeding pipeline.\n\nMethodsWe compared prediction accuracies from a single-trait (uT) and a multi-trait (MT) mixed model for single environment genetic evaluation (Scenario 1) while for multi-environment evaluation accounting for genotype-by-environment interaction (Scenario 2) we compared accuracies from a univariate (uE) and a multivariate (ME) multi-environment mixed model. We used sixteen years of data for six target cassava traits for these analyses. All models for Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 were based on the one-step approach. A 5-fold cross validation scheme with 10-repeat cycles were used to assess model prediction accuracies.\n\nResultsIn Scenario 1, the MT models had higher prediction accuracies than the uT models for most traits and locations analyzed amounting to 32 percent better prediction accuracy on average. However for Scenario 2, we observed that the ME model had on average (across all locations and traits) 12 percent better predictive power than the uE model.\n\nConclusionWe recommend the use of multivariate mixed models (MT and ME) for cassava genetic evaluation. These models may be useful for other plant species.