Assessment of the Response to Selection for Leaf Water Conductance in Lolium perenne

Measurements of leaf water conductance (LWC) were made in agrowth room on plants previously selected for either high orlow LWC as seedlings from two Lolium perenne L. populations.Differences in LWC were maintained between selection groupswhen measured as older plants, but there were considerable changesin LWC of individual selection groups on remeasurement. TheLWCs and the rankings of LWCs of individual genotypes were correlatedbetween experiments, thus demonstrating that selection of genotypeswas worthwhile. Thus the possibility of including LWC in selectionprogrammes was established. Investigations conducted to optimize sampling for LWC are described.It was concluded that little further reduction in the standarderror of LWC measurements was obtained by making more than eightmeasurements per genotype, and it was important to sample onat least four tillers. A new measure for the phenotypic stabilityof a selection group is proposed, named realized ‘selectivity’.The realized selectivity can be used to estimate the upper valuefor realized heritability and is about 0.5 for LWC in L. perenne.The values of phenotypic repeatability of LWC are compared withother similar measurements. Lolium perenne L, leaf water conductance, selection, components of variance, scale of measurement