When corn plants are too tall, they lodge (topple over) prior to harvest. This i

Question

When corn plants are too tall, they lodge (topple over) prior to harvest. This is bad since the grain is often lost when it cannot be picked up off of the ground by mechanical harvesters. You have a high-yielding strain of corn, but the plants often lodge. You want to estimate broad-sense heritability for % lodging in corn. You start by mating two inbred lines to produce an F1 generation. The F1 was allowed to intermate to produce an F2 generation. The variances for each generation are given below:

Variance of inbred line 1 = 340
Variance of inbred line 2 = 338
Variance of F1 = 340
Variance of F2 = 849

1. What is the phenotypic variance of the F2 generation?

2. What is the environmental variance? Round to the nearest whole number.

3. What is the genetic variance? Round to the nearest whole number.

4. What is the broad-sense heritability? Round to three decimal places.

Explanation / Answer

Vp = Phenotypic variance
Vg = genotypic variance
Ve = environmental variance
Vp = Vg + Ve

H2 = Vg/Vp

1. Vp = 849
2. Ve = (340+338)/2 = 339+340/2 = 339.5 ~ 340
3. Vg=Vp-Ve = 849-340=509
4. Broad sense heritability = Vg/Vp = 509/849 = 0.599 ~ 0.60.

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