Can trait physiology and modelling add value to plant breeding?
Although the underlying genetic controls assumed for the traits used in this analysis were very simple, the results nonetheless suggested that trait physiology and modelling could add value to plant breeding by unravelling environment and possibly gene context dependencies that cause inefficiencies in MAS. The success of molecular breeding relies on an effective prediction of phenotypic variation based on allelic variation. Current approaches to MAS for complex traits rely heavily on the use of statistical approaches that are based on linear models. Their predictive power is poor when interactions among genes and/or environments (i.e., context dependencies) are important. The added value from a trait physiology and modelling framework arises because consequences of these interactions on the resultant phenotype are an emergent property of the framework. Hence, predictive power and the effective implementation of MAS are enhanced. To realise the added value of a trait physiology and mode
