1996 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 19-27
A computer program for calculating coefficients of parentage for self-pollinating crops was written in Prolog, a programming language with logical operations for artificial intelligence and data retrieval applications. Breeding lines of malting barley in Fukuoka Agricultural Research Center were analyzed. It was found that a few ancestors constituted a major proportion of the genetic base of modern cultivars. Only three ancestors contributed, collectively, about 70% of the gene pool for the breeding lines. 'Harunanijo', a renowned good malting quality cultivar, showed average coefficients of parentage as high as 0.561 with breeding lines. Minor differences in the history of old ancestors had little effect on coefficients of parentage when they were computed using modern cultivars. A significant positive correlations (0.421) between the coefficient of parentage and malting quality was found.
