Heritability of primocane-yield components in red raspberry

A partial diallel design with 21 F-1 sib-families and their reciprocal families was planted in a randomized complete block design in May 2014 in Oxnard, CA, USA and the primocane crop evaluated in the fall of 2014. Average marketable (GYLD) and non marketable (BYLD) fruit yield, cane number (NCAN), cane height (CLEN), cane diameter (CDIAM), number of nodes (NBUD), number of laterals (NLAT), lateral length (LLEN), number of fruits per lateral (NFRT), and berry weight (BWT) was recorded for 2 individual plants within each family throughout the course of the entire study. Narrow-sense heritability, genotypic and phenotypic correlations, and general (GCA) and specific (SCA) combining ability, and reciprocal effects were estimated. Narrow sense heritability estimates ranged from moderately low (GYLD=0.27) to moderately high (NCAN=0.70). GYLD had a strong positive genetic correlation with CLEN (r(a)=+0.73), moderate correlation with NBUD (r(a)=+0.49), and poor correlation with NLAT (r(a)=+0.14), LLEN (r(a)=+0.11), BYLD (r(a)=+0.23), and BWT (r(a)=+0.03). A negative genetic correlation was observed with NCAN (r(a)=-0.34) and CDIAM (r(a)=-0.04). GCA effects were significant for all traits except for CDIAM, BWT, and GYLD. SCA and reciprocal effects were also significant for all traits except for CDIAM and BWT.