Indirect selection in a commercial corn breeding program

The present study, "INDIRECT SELECTION IN A COMMERCIAL CORN BREEDING PROGRAM”, was conducted within AgReliant Genetics, which is the third largest corn seed company in the United States. Specifically within the Breeding and the Biostatistics Departments located in Lebanon’s research station, Indiana, in the Corn Belt. The objective of this research was to contribute to the development of new hybrid corn varieties using synthetic populations. To reach this goal within the allocated time (from March to August, 2015), we combined the latest technologies in plant breeding including double haploid (DH) plants and marker assisted selection (MAS) approaches namely: genome wide association studies (GWAS), genomic selection (GS) and a phenotypic marker (grain translucency). In the present thesis, we focused on test weight (TW) together with grain yield (YLD) which are measures of grain quality and grain quantity in the final product, respectively, as well as grain moisture.