Initial selection steps in olive breeding programs
2015
León, Lorenzo | Velasco, Leonardo | Rosa, Raúl de la
Information on olive breeding is very scarce and particularly concerning selection strategies to obtain new olive cultivars, while for other fruit tree crops different possibilities of resources allocation have been reported regarding the number of selection steps, number of replications and number of characters under evaluation and phenotyping methodologies. In this work, we report the utility of an intermediate step in an olive breeding program in contrast with a previous strategy where the initial selection at the seedling stage was directly followed by the final step in different environments. Correlations between data recorded at seedling and intermediate steps indicate that selection for bearing earliness, fruit size and oil content can be efficiently performed at the seedling stage, whereas evaluation at the intermediate step would be necessary to select for yield and vigor. Similar conclusions were obtained from the analysis of heritability estimated for these characters at the intermediate step of selection. Additionally, genotypes evaluated at this intermediate step showed high variability for characters not previously considered at the seedling step such as pattern of oil accumulation and oil quality parameters as fatty acid composition, tocopherol and sterols content. Therefore, the intermediate step proposed seems an efficient strategy for accurate selection of genotypes for productivity, tree vigor, oil content and quality.
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