BACKGROUND Heterosis describes the superior phenotypes observed in hybrids relative to their inbred parents. Maize is a model system for studying heterosis due to the high levels of yield heterosis and commercial use of hybrids. METHODS The inbred lines from an association mapping panel were crossed to a common inbred line, B73, to generate nearly 300 hybrid genotypes. Heterosis was evaluated...

Fixed heterosis resulting from favorable interactions between the genes on their homoeologous genomes in an allopolyploid is considered analogous to classical heterosis accruing from interactions between homologous chromosomes in heterozygous plants of a diploid species. It has been hypothesized that fixed heterosis may be one of the causes of low classical heterosis in allopolyploids. We used ...

Hybrid vigor or heterosis refers to the superior performance of F1 hybrid plants over their parents. Heterosis is particularly important in the production systems of major crops. Recent studies have suggested that epigenetic regulation such as DNA methylation is involved in heterosis, but the molecular mechanism of heterosis is still unclear. To address the epigenetic contribution to heterosis ...

Exploitation of heterosis in crops has contributed greatly to improvement in global food and energy production. In spite of the pervasive importance of heterosis, a complete understanding of its mechanisms has remained elusive. In this study, a small test-crossed rice population was constructed to investigate the formation mechanism of heterosis for 13 traits. The results of the relative mid-pa...

Despite the importance of heterosis and the efforts to comprehend this phenomenon, its molecular bases are still unknown. In this study, we intended to detect Quantitative trait loci (QTL) for mid-parent heterosis under infestation with the Mediterranean corn borer (MCB, Sesamia nonagrioides Lef.) using a North Carolina design III approach with a RIL population derived from a European flint inb...

Although heterosis is widely utilized in crop production, its genetic and molecular basis is still elusive. It is arguably that heterosis arises in crosses between genetically and/or epigenetically distinct individuals. Various genetic models have been proposed to explain heterosis, such as dominance and overdominance hypothesis. With the recent advancements in functional genomics, epigenetics,...

Data from Hereford, 25% Simmental-75% Hereford, 50% Simmental-50% Hereford, and 75% Simmental-25% Hereford dams were used to estimate maternal heterosis and level of agreement with the dominance model. Cows were located at the Northern Agricultural Research Center near Havre, MT and were managed consistent with practices for western range environments. Sample halves of dam breed groups were bre...

Heterosis refers to improved or altered performance observed in F1 hybrid organisms when compared to their parents. Heterosis has revolutionized agriculture by improving key agronomic traits in crop plants. However, even after decades of research in this area a unifying molecular theory of heterosis remains somewhat elusive. For many years it has been observed that the dominant, overdominant an...

A controlled-nutrient (CN) experiment was conducted to test three heterosis hypotheses with reference to tomato yield, and its components, for a set of two inbred lines and their hybrid that had previously exhibited considerable heterosis under field conditions. The CN treatments consisted of periodic applications of differential doses of nutrient solution to plants reared individually in conta...

Heterosis, assumed proportional to expected breed heterozygosity, was calculated for 6834 individuals with birth, weaning and yearling weight records from Cycle VII and advanced generations of the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC) Germplasm Evaluation (GPE) project. Breeds represented in these data included: Angus, Hereford, Red Angus, Charolais, Gelbvieh, Simmental, Limousin and Compos...