02634naa a2200361 a 450000100080000000500110000800800410001902200140006002400520007410000210012624501190014726000090026652016310027565000370190665000130194365000190195665000240197565000090199965000160200865000100202465000140203465000350204865000170208365000250210065300170212570000200214270000190216270000170218170000190219870000150221770000200223277300200225221548612023-07-10       2023    bl uuuu     u00u1 u    #d  a0018-067X7 ahttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-023-00636-32DOI1 aCASTRO, A. P. de  aPopulation improvement via recurrent selection drives genetic gain in upland rice breeding.h[electronic resource]  c2023  aOne of the main challenges of breeding programs is to identify superior genotypes from a large number of candidates. By gradually increasing the frequency of favorable alleles in the breeding population, recurrent selection improves the population mean for target traits, increasing the chance to identify promising genotypes. In rice, population improvement through recurrent selection has been used very little to date, except in Latin America. At Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), the upland rice breeding program is conducted in two phases: population improvement followed by product development. In this study, the CNA6 population, evaluated over five cycles (3 to 7) of selection, including 20 field trials, was used to assess the realized genetic gain. A high rate of genetic gain was observed for grain yield, at 215 kg.ha-1 per cycle or 67.8 kg.ha-1 per year (3.08%). The CNA6 population outperformed the controls only for the last cycle, with a yield difference of 1128 kg.ha-1. An analysis of the product development pipeline, based on 29 advanced yield trials with lines derived from cycles 3 to 6, showed that lines derived from the CNA6 population had high grain yield, but did not outperform the controls. These results demonstrate that the application of recurrent selection to a breeding population with sufficient genetic variability can result in significant genetic gains for quantitative traits, such as grain yield. The integration of this strategy into a two-phase breeding program also makes it possible to increase quantitative traits while selecting for other traits of interest.  aBreeding and Genetic Improvement  aGenotype  aPlant breeding  aRecurrent selection  aRice  aVariability  aArroz  aGenótipo  aMelhoramento Genético Vegetal  aOryza Sativa  aSeleção Recorrente  aGenetic gain1 aBRESEGHELLO, F.1 aFURTINI, I. V.1 aUTUMI, M. M.1 aPEREIRA, J. A.1 aCAO, T.-V.1 aBARTHOLOMÉ, J.  tHeredity, 2023.