Genomic Selection in Canadian Spruces

Abstract

The genetic gain of spruce (Picea spp.)breeding programs is impeded by long recurrentselection cycles stemming from biologicalconstraints such as late expression of traits,weak juvenile mature correlations, and lateonset of sexual maturity. Genomic selection(GS) is capable of addressing these barriers toimproving the rate of genetic gain via earlyprediction of phenotypes using dense geneticmarker arrays. Results from GS studiesfocused on spruce species in Canada thus farhave produced encouraging results to captureadditional genetic gain for wood quality,growth, and insect resistance traits eitherthrough the re-analysis of existing progenytrials with genomic information or via predictionof phenotypes for untested candidatetrees. With the continual improvement ofphenotyping technologies and spruce genomicresources, we expect the capability of GS tocapture genetic gain to greatly exceed that oftraditional pedigree-based selection methodsin the future.