Industrial Crops and Products 77 (2015) 1033–1038 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Crops and Products jo ur nal home p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop Estimation of genetic parameters for in vitro oil palm characteristics (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) and selection of genotypes for cloning capacity and oil yield Thais Roseli Corrêa a,∗ , Sérgio Yoshimitsu Motoike a , Sara Morra Coser a , Gustavo da Silveira a , Marcos Deon Vilela de Resende b , Gilson Sanchez Chia c a Departamento de Fitotecnia, Universidade Federal de Vic ¸ osa, MG, Brazil b EMBRAPA Florestas e Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Universidade Federal de Vic ¸ osa, MG, Brazil c Agropalma S.A., Depratamento de Fitossanidade, Tailândia, PA, Brazil a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 9 May 2015 Received in revised form 13 September 2015 Accepted 28 September 2015 Keywords: Plant breeding Somatic embryogenesis Genetic control Callogenesis Embryogenic line a b s t r a c t Oil palm has stood out among the promising species for biofuel production and plant improvement through cloning superior individuals is the technology that contributes most to increase oil production. However, there are no studies on the genotypes behavior regarding both in vitro performance and yield potential simultaneously. By this mean, the objective of this paper was to study the genetic control of the related characteristics to the oil palm cloning process, and to identify responsive genotypes within a collection of 32 elite materials of a commercial planting in order to select the superior genotypes for the formation of a clonal garden. Callogenesis and production of embryogenic lines, which are main characteristics related to the cloning process, presented genetic control, verified through estimates of genetic parameters: heritability, coefficient of relative variation, and selective accuracy; also indicating efficiency in the selection of superior genotypes within the evaluated set. Genotypes A-13, A-14, A-18, A-20 and A-21 were selected as superior genotypes for both characteristics, such as oil yield and in vitro performance, due to formation of embryogenic lines. This has been the first study investigating the genetic control of the cloning capacity aiming to the selection of genotypes for a clonal garden formation. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The increase in oil prices and the intention of reducing the emis- sion of greenhouse gases has boosted the demand for biofuels (Gan and Li, 2014). Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) has stood out due to its high oil yield if compared to other biofuel producing plants, such as soybean, sunflower and rapeseed (Gan and Li, 2014; Lam et al., 2009; Mielke, 2013). The global dependence for oil, extracted from oil palm tends to increase in the coming years: it is estimated that the production should meet a demand of 26.6 million tons by 2035, due to technological investments (Gan and Li, 2014). One of the technologies that have contributed the most to the real increase of oil production is the plant breeding (Nugroho et al., 2014). The planting of improved oil palm varieties is critical to long-term high production efficiency and also to the sustainabil- ∗ Corresponding author at: Departamento de Fitotecnia, Universidade Federal de Vic ¸ osa, Av. P.H. Rolfs, Campus Universita´ ırio, Vic ¸ osa, MG 36570-000, Brazil. Fax: +55 31 3899 2614. E-mail address: thaisroselicorrea@hotmail.com (T.R. Corrêa). ity of the crop. Current commercial oil palm planting materials are composed by a mixture of dura (D) × pisifera (P) or tenera (T) hybrids from non-fully inbreed parents, thus presenting consider- able genetic variability between and within the hybrids, depending on the relatedness and inbreeding status among their D an P par- ents. Conventional hybrids breeding methodology would require at least three generations or over 20 years to achieve the superior yield of these individuals (Wong and Bernardo, 2008; Soh, 2005). As strategy, the development of commercial plantations of elite clones can offer advantages such as harvest uniformity, facilities in man- agement practices and optimization of the oil production (Malike et al., 2012). Success in cloning would short-circuit the process (Soh et al., 2011) and maximizing oil yielding in up to 18 t/ha, improving both production quality and quantity (Nugroho et al., 2014). Clonal propagation has an important role through tissue cul- ture, where the goal is to select multiple elite genotypes containing desirable characteristics, and then propagate them in mass, forming uniform commercial plantations (Nugroho et al., 2014). Associated with clonal propagation, palms ortet selection from commercial fields is an indispensable step in the cloning process. Ortets are selection from the best (but not limited to) families within the http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2015.09.066 0926-6690/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.