Intersubgenomic heterosis in seed yield potential observed in a new type of Brassica napus introgressed with partial Brassica rapa genome

This paper reports the observation on the intersubgenomic heterosis for seed yield among hybrids between natural Brassica napus (A(n)A(n)C(n)C(n)) and a new type of B. napus with introgressions of genomic components of Brassica rapa (A(r)A(r)). This B. napus was selected from the progeny of B. napus x B. rapa and ( B. napus x B. rapa) x B. rapa based on extensive phenotypic and cytological observation. Among the 129 studied partial intersubgenomic hybrids, which were obtained by randomly crossing 13 lines of the new type of B. napus in F-3 or BC1F3 to 27 cultivars of B. napus from different regions as tester lines, about 90% of combinations exceeded the yield of their respective tester lines, whereas about 75% and 25% of combinations surpassed two elite Chinese cultivars, respectively. This strong heterosis was further confirmed by reevaluating 2 out of the 129 combinations in a successive year and by surveying hybrids between 20 lines of the new type of B. napus in BC1F5 and its parental B. napus in two locations. Some DNA segments from B. rapa were identified with significant effects on seed yield and yield components of the new type of B. napus in BC1F5 and intersubgenomic hybrids in positive or negative direction. It seems that the genomic components introgressed from B. rapa contributed to improvement of seed yield of rapeseed.