ABSTRACT
Nearly 280 different cultivars have been released between 1970 and 1990. Two-thirds of the cultivars were developed by 17 different breeding programs with the remaining third by smaller programs. Deltapine released the largest number of varieties (28) during the two decades. Three programs had the most influence in terms of cultivars released by other programs with their material in the pedigree. Those programs are Stoneville, New Mexico, and Coker, and they influenced 216, 112, and 102 different cultivars, respectively. The most influential line was Stoneville 2 with a genetic contribution of 0.09 (r value) to a subset of 260 cultivars. All genetic contributions were low when compared to figures obtained for most other crops, e.g. soybean and wheat.
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