The Rosaceae family includes most of the temperate tree fruit crops such as apple, apricot, peach, pear, and cherry. Seedling selection is the process of selecting superior seedlings generated from crosses for cultivar development. Traditional seedling selection (TSS) is expensive for most rosaceous tree fruit because of long juvenility and large plant sizes. Marker-assisted seedling selection (MASS) is a promising approach to improve the efficiency of TSS with the assistance of DNA markers. A lack of decision-support tools is a major challenge in identifying cost-efficient MASS schemes. Here we report on progress made in the development of a web-based software tool Seedling Select to enable accurate and flexible cost modeling for MASS in rosaceous tree fruit.
Seedling Select consist of four modules: TSS Cost Structure (mod. 1), Seedling Family Structure (mod. 2), and DNA Test Cost Structure (mod. 3) lay the foundation of cost estimation by modeling costs in each TSS stage, seedling family, and DNA test, respectively, while MASS Cost Structure (mod. 4) calculates and compares total costs of TSS and MASS by integrating outputs from the previous modules with a user-defined MASS scheme. By comparing costs of all possible MASS schemes, this software tool will suggest cost-efficient MASS schemes for defined sets of breeding families.
Seedling Select will be hosted on the Genome Database for Rosaceae (www.rosaceae.org). Once available, Seedling Select will assist breeders to design efficient MASS schemes with a rational allocation of resources.
