The Australian breeding populations started with about 700 individual plant selections and reduced on average to about 10 elite lines per cross (i.e 1.4%) with two generations of evaluation and selection before entry into these experiments.
Increased population sizes therefore would require substantially increased resources at the early stages of breeding. Culp et al. (1979)
showed similar numbers in starting with thousands of selections and only having desirable strength in a ratio of 1:300.
Once intermating was done between superior plants,
the frequency of desirable combinations increased.
Therefore, recurrent selection should be used as part of the breeding strategy to more effectively assemble desired alleles for yield and fibre quality as well as to weaken and/or break their negative relationship.