Trait introgression is a complex process that plant breeders use to introduce desirable alleles from one variety or species to another. Two of the major types of decisions that must be made during this sophisticated and uncertain workflow are: parental selection and resource allocation. We formulated the trait introgression problem as an engineering process and proposed a Markov Decision Processes (MDP) model to optimize the resource allocation procedure. The efficiency of the MDP model was compared with static resource allocation strategies and their trade-offs among budget, deadline, and probability of success are demonstrated. Simulation results suggest that dynamic resource allocation strategies from the MDP model significantly improve the efficiency of the trait introgression by allocating the right amount of resources according to the genetic outcome of previous generations.
Keywords: Markov decision processes; dynamic programming; multi-allelic trait introgression; plant breeding; resource allocation.
Copyright © 2021 Han, Cameron, Wang, Pham and Beavis.