Ruotsalainen S, Lindgren D, Mullin TJ

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH 30(2): 333 FEB 2000

The start of the communication reads like

A recent paper by Lindgren and Mullin (1998) investigated relatedness and status effective number of seed orchard crops, collected under a variety of circumstances. We have determined that there is an error in the paper. An attempt was made in formulas 8 and 9 to derive average relatedness of the gene pool of the seed crop when the orchard is exposed to pollen contamination. Average relatedness is the probability that two genes from the seed crop are identical by descent. It was assumed (page 279) that the male fertilities sum to 0.5 (the other half of the genes coming from the seed parents) for the term corresponding to the case when both genes considered originate from the seed orchard. This is not correct, and this also affects some developments based on these formulas.

Relatedness, when the compared genes both originate from the seed orchard, can occur because both the genes share the same seed parent or because they share the same pollen parent. It will (usually) be more common that they share seed parent than that they share pollen parent following pollen contamination, and thus the female fertilities will receive more weight and the male less weight. If an additional assumption is made, being that the fertility on the male side is directly proportional to that on the female side, the formulas and conclusions will be correct. The relative share of contributions among the clones will then be independent of the contamination. In a seed orchard without contamination, a clone would give equal contributions on the male and female sides (sexual symmetry). In many cases, this assumption is a realistic approximation. Even when this assumption is not fulfilled, many of the conclusions may be correct or approximately correct.

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