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1 Abstract

When the parents are grown beside their crosses, the crosses can be compared with the parents: the heterosis of each cross, and Gardner and Eberhart’s split of the crosses into variety effects and heterosis. In a diallel with reciprocals, the reciprocal effects split into maternal and non-maternal parts. This vignette takes these three in turn.

2 Heterosis

With the parents grown beside the crosses, Heterosis() gives for each cross the heterosis over the mid-parent \(MP = (P_i + P_j)/2\), the better parent and, if a check variety is named, the standard variety, in percent, each with a \(t\) test. With \(B\) replicates the standard errors of the differences are \(\sqrt{3MS_E/(2B)}\) for \(F_{ij} - MP\) and \(\sqrt{2MS_E/B}\) for the other two.

het <-
  Heterosis(
      y      = Yield
    , Rep    = Rep
    , Cross1 = Cross1
    , Cross2 = Cross2
    , data   = GriffingData2
    , Check  = 3
    , Better = c("higher", "lower")[1]
    )
het$StdErr
   F1_MP    F1_BP
6.471663 7.472833 
head(x = het$Heterosis[order(-het$Heterosis$MP)], n = 6)
   Cross1 Cross2      F1 MidParent BetterParent       MP     t_MP         p_MP
   <char> <char>   <num>     <num>        <num>    <num>    <num>        <num>
1:      1      5 120.290  69.87375       85.645 72.15335 7.790308 5.025436e-12
2:      3      8 117.735  78.03500       82.000 50.87461 6.134435 1.531526e-08
3:      3      5  94.285  64.08625       74.070 47.12204 4.666304 9.085783e-06
4:      7      8 125.270  86.48000       90.960 44.85430 5.993822 2.926609e-08
5:      5      8  94.820  68.05125       82.000 39.33616 4.136301 7.130931e-05
6:      3      7 111.540  82.51500       90.960 35.17542 4.484937 1.870084e-05
         BP     t_BP         p_BP Check       SH     t_SH         p_SH
      <num>    <num>        <num> <num>    <num>    <num>        <num>
1: 40.45187 4.636127 1.025726e-05 74.07 62.40043 6.185071 1.211061e-08
2: 43.57927 4.781988 5.683737e-06 74.07 58.95099 5.843165 5.813966e-08
3: 27.29175 2.705132 7.968289e-03 74.07 27.29175 2.705132 7.968289e-03
4: 37.71988 4.591298 1.227161e-05 74.07 69.12380 6.851485 5.139696e-10
5: 15.63415 1.715547 8.919434e-02 74.07 28.01404 2.776725 6.503853e-03
6: 22.62533 2.753976 6.940153e-03 74.07 50.58728 5.014163 2.174202e-06
plot(x = het, which = c("MP", "BP", "SH", "residuals", "qq")[1])

For traits where a lower value is better (days to flowering, disease score), Better = "lower" takes the lower parent as the better one.

3 Maternal and non-maternal reciprocal effects

Cockerham and Weir (1977) write the reciprocal effect of Methods 1 and 3 as \(r_{ij} = m_i - m_j + n_{ij}\): a maternal effect of each parent and a non-maternal remainder. Griffing(..., Reciprocal = "split") splits the reciprocal line of the analysis of variance accordingly, on \(P - 1\) and \((P - 1)(P - 2)/2\) degrees of freedom:

rs <-
  Griffing(
      y          = Yield
    , Rep        = Rep
    , Cross1     = Cross1
    , Cross2     = Cross2
    , data       = GriffingData1
    , Method     = 1
    , Model      = 1
    , Reciprocal = c("combined", "split")[2]
    )
rs$ANOVA
              Df  Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)
gca            7  3804.6  543.52 18.8868 <2e-16 ***
sca           28 22060.8  787.89 27.3783 <2e-16 ***
maternal       7    77.7   11.10  0.3856 0.9100
non-maternal  21   287.9   13.71  0.4763 0.9758
Error        189  5439.0   28.78
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
round(x = rs$Maternal, digits = 3)
     1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8
 0.087  0.681  0.968  0.830 -0.818  0.196 -1.257 -0.686 
round(x = rs$StdErr[c("mi", "mi_mj", "nij")], digits = 3)
   mi mi_mj   nij
1.255 1.897 3.285 

Here neither part is significant: the reciprocal differences of this diallel are small and show no maternal pattern.

4 Gardner and Eberhart’s Analyses II and III

For parents and one set of crosses, Gardner and Eberhart (1966) model the parents by variety effects \(v_j\) and the crosses by the mean of their parents plus heterosis. Analysis II splits the heterosis into average heterosis \(\bar{h}\), variety heterosis \(h_j\) and specific heterosis \(s_{jj'}\):

ge2 <-
  GardnerEberhart(
      y        = Yield
    , Rep      = Rep
    , Cross1   = Cross1
    , Cross2   = Cross2
    , data     = GriffingData2
    , Analysis = 2
    , Model    = 1
    )
ge2$ANOVA
                    Df  Sum Sq Mean Sq F value    Pr(>F)
Varieties            7  1850.9  264.41  9.4698 4.546e-09 ***
Heterosis           28 12529.1  447.47 16.0259 < 2.2e-16 ***
Average heterosis    1   373.8  373.81 13.3879  0.000398 ***
Variety heterosis    7  2850.7  407.25 14.5854 3.807e-13 ***
Specific heterosis  20  9304.6  465.23 16.6619 < 2.2e-16 ***
Error              105  2931.8   27.92
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
ge2$Average
      Estimate Std. Error   t value     Pr(>|t|)
mu_v 84.633437   1.868208 45.301929 9.626013e-71
hbar  7.750938   2.118349  3.658952 3.980309e-04
plot(x = ge2, which = c("effects", "specific", "residuals", "qq")[1])

Analysis III keeps the variety effects for the parents and analyses the crosses by general and specific combining ability, with average heterosis between the two; its gca and sca lines are Griffing’s Method 4:

ge3 <-
  GardnerEberhart(
      y        = Yield
    , Rep      = Rep
    , Cross1   = Cross1
    , Cross2   = Cross2
    , data     = GriffingData2
    , Analysis = 3
    , Model    = 1
    )
ge3$ANOVA
                   Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value    Pr(>F)
Varieties           7 1574.8  224.96   8.057 8.099e-08 ***
Average heterosis   1  373.8  373.81  13.388  0.000398 ***
gca                 7 3126.9  446.70  15.998 3.672e-14 ***
sca                20 9304.6  465.23  16.662 < 2.2e-16 ***
Error             105 2931.8   27.92
---
Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

5 Summary

Heterosis() compares each cross with its parents and a check; Griffing(..., Reciprocal = "split") asks whether the reciprocal differences come from the mother; GardnerEberhart() describes parents and crosses with one model of variety effects and heterosis.

6 References

Cockerham, C. C. and Weir, B. S. (1977). Quadratic analyses of reciprocal crosses. Biometrics, 33(1), 187–203.

Gardner, C. O. and Eberhart, S. A. (1966). Analysis and interpretation of the variety cross diallel and related populations. Biometrics, 22(3), 439–452.

Murray, L. W., Ray, I. M., Dong, H. and Segovia-Lerma, A. (2003). Clarification and reevaluation of population-based diallel analyses: Gardner and Eberhart Analyses II and III revisited. Crop Science, 43(6), 1930–1937.

Singh, R. K. and Chaudhary, B. D. (2004). Biometrical Methods in Quantitative Genetic Analysis. Kalyani Publishers, New Delhi.