An empirical comparison of selection methods for the improvement of biomass.

A single generation of upward truncation selection on families with 20% selected was carried out in each of five replicates using Tribolium castaneum as the test organism. The experiment involved eight lines: N - selected for offspring number; W - selected for pupal weight; B - selected for biomass; Q - quadratic index selected; L21 - linear index selected with relative economic weights of 2∶1 offspring number to pupal weight; L11 - linear index selected with relative economic weights of 1∶1 offspring number to pupal weight; L12 - linear index selected with relative economic weights of 1∶2 offspring number to pupal weight; C - an unselected control.Biomass (weight of offspring per family), offspring number, and pupal weight were measured. No differences in response to selection were found among the linear index lines and the pupal weight line with regard to any trait analysed. Generally, response to selection in the linear index lines and pupal weight line was small for offspring number and high for pupal weight. Selection pressure on offspring number in these lines seemed to be dependent on the correlation between offspring number and pupal weight. As a result, response to selection for biomass was poor in the linear index and pupal weight selected lines. In the case of the linear indices, poor response to selection for biomass appeared to be due to the violation of the assumption of additivity of the traits included in the definition of aggregate genotype.The responses in the quadratic index, biomass, and offspring number selected lines were equal with respect to selection for biomass. The response of the quadratic index selected line was less than the responses of the biomass and offspring number selected lines for offspring number, but the response in the quadratic index line was as large as that of any other line included in the experiment and greater than the biomass and offspring number selected lines where pupal weight was the criterion.Highly significant amounts of variation were found for all traits indicating that more replicates are needed for precise evaluation of selection systems.