A diallel cross is a mating scheme used by

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

and

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breeders, as well as

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, to investigate the genetic underpinnings of quantitative traits.Hallauer, A. R. and J. B. Miranda Filho. 1988 Quantitative genetics in maize breeding. 2nd ed. Iowa State University Press, Ames, IO. In a full diallel, all parents are crossed to make hybrids in all possible combinations. Variations include half diallels with and without parents, omitting reciprocal crosses. Full diallels require twice as many crosses and entries in experiments, but allow for testing for maternal and paternal effects. If such "reciprocal" effects are assumed to be negligible, then a half diallel without reciprocals can be effective. Common analysis methods utilize

general linear model The general linear model or general multivariate regression model is a compact way of simultaneously writing several multiple linear regression models. In that sense it is not a separate statistical linear model. The various multiple linear regre ...

s to identify heterotic groups, estimate

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or specific combining ability,Gardner, C. O. and S. A. Eberhart. 1966. Analysis and interpretation of the variety cross diallel and related populations. Biometrics 22: 439-452 interactions with testing environments and years, or estimates of additive, dominant, and epistatic genetic effectsHayman, B. I. 1954. The analysis of variance of diallel tables. Biometrics 10: 235-244 and genetic correlations.

Mating designs

There are four main types of diallel mating design: # Full diallel with parents and reciprocal F1 crosses # Full diallel as above, but excluding parents # Half diallel with parents, but without reciprocal crosses # Half diallel without parents or reciprocal crosses

References

{{Reflist, 30em Genetics Breeding