Heterosis, also known as hybrid vigor, is the superior performance of a heterozygous hybrid relative to its homozygous parents. Despite the scientific curiosity of this phenotypic phenomenon and its ...

When two homozygous plant lines with different characteristics are crossed, the resulting offspring are often more robust and productive than their parents. This phenomenon is called heterosis. It can ...

Few studies quantify evolutionary processes in populations of domesticated plants in traditional farming systems. In February's Ecology Letters, Pujol, David and McKey show that these systems ...

A new study of sorghum explores the genetics of heterosis, the process by which hybrid plants perform better than the parent varieties used to create them. The new study fills in some of the gaps that ...

Heterosis can be separated into two basic types: direct and maternal. Direct or individual heterosis is the effect of hybrid vigor in the crossbred offspring. Performance traits normally improved in ...

This study was reported by Qifa Zhang and Yidan Ouyang’ group from the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China. Inbreeding depression is ...

AMES, Iowa – An Iowa State University agronomist has helped uncover the genetic mechanisms in sorghum plants that allow hybrids to perform better than parent varieties, a process known as heterosis.