Breeding potential of single, double and multiple crosses in common bean
José Eustáquio de Souza Carneiro; Magno Antonio Patto Ramalho; Ângela de Fátima Barbosa Abreu and Flávia Maria Avelar Gonçalves
This common bean study was carried out to improve the understanding of the several strategies that can be used to obtain segregant populations in self-pollinating plant breeding programs. Eight inbred lines were crossed in a pyramidal form, and four single, two double and one multiple hybrid were obtained. The potential of the different hybrids was investigated based on the performance of the F2 and F2 plus F3 segregant populations. The potential for obtaining superior inbred lines was estimated by (m + a), which is the average of the F∞ inbred lines, and by the probability of a given population producing inbred lines that outperform the yield of the Pérola cultivar by 20%. It was shown that the use of multiple crosses is not advantageous when breeders have well defined objectives and experimental conditions to assess and identify the most promising segregant populations.