8.10 SELECTION SEQUENCE
In a conventional Jerusalem artichoke breeding program, crosses are made between carefully selected parent lines and the progeny are screened for traits that are considered critical (e.g., yield;disease resistance; tuber color, size, and shape; tuberization photoperiodic response; inulin content; and degree of polymerization). With traits that have low heritabilities or are difficult to accuratelyquantify, progress is often very slow. Breeders generally progress through a predetermined sequence of selection traits with progeny being discarded that do not meet the minimum acceptable requirements. There is generally a trade-off between the importance of the trait for improvement and ease of selection. The first trait in the selection sequence has the greatest number of progeny; as members are discarded, the number remaining for subsequent traits in the sequence decreases rapidly. For example, while the degree of polymerization of inulin may be considered the most critical trait for improvement, the difficulty of measuring it often moves the trait much later in the selection sequence, such that 99% of the progeny have already been discarded before inulin chemistry is assessed. Therefore, if you start with 1,000 progeny, by the time you assess inulin chemistry there are probably only 10 remaining. The chance of finding one of these clones in which the degree of polymerization is truly superior is exceedingly small. Hence, selection sequence can have a pronounced impact on breeding success. The numerical implications can be seen in selection for inulin yield by van Soest et al. (1993). From 8,000 seedlings derived from an open-pollinated nursery, the population was reduced to 80 by the third year, which produced only four clones with significantly
improved inulin yield over ‘Columbia’ (i.e., 0.05% of the original population).