Combining ability and heterosis of hybridization between cultured and wild stocks of Haliotis diversicolor supertexta

The germplasm resources ofHaliotis diversicolor supertextaare declining in South China. To solve this problem, we chose2 small abalone populations from Shanwei cultured stock (BD) and Shenzhen wild stock (YS) as parents to make complete diallel cross and built4 mating combinations, whose heterosis and combining ability of growth traits (shell length, shell width and body weight) were analyzed at 120 dph, 150 dph, 210 dph and 270 dph, respectively. The ranges of the mid-parent heterosis on hybrids shell length, width and body weightwere 5.3~17.0, 6.3~15.3 and 7.8~9.0, respectively; and the ranges of heterobeltiosis were -1.0~11.2, -1.2~6.6 and -10.9~4.1, respectively. The reciprocal crosses had higher mid-parent heterosis compared with the orthogonal combination. The GCA effects of each growth stage of BD groups were negative values (-0.19~-0.09, -0.11~-0.07 and -0.40~-0.24), while the YS groups are positive values (0.09~0.19, 0.07~0.11 and 0.24~0.40). Thespecific combining ability (SCA) effects of YS group and BD group at each growth stage were 0.01~0.14, 0~0.07 and 0.02~0.07, respectively. The general combining ability (GCA),SCA and maternal effects of BD group were all less than those of YS group, which shows that increasing the quantities of the wild population in the mating parents can improve the growth performance of H.diversicolor supertexta effectively.