ABSTRACT
Plant genetics is the core science behind plant breeding. It is often said that plant genetics began with Gregor Mendel. Qualitative traits are traits that can be scored into distinct classes. They are usually controlled variants of one or a few genes and are inherited in a Mendelian fashion, exhibiting dominant, recessive, or epistatic segregation patterns. Virescens fruit could facilitate identification of ripe bunches for harvesting of taller palms for unskilled harvesters. Currently crown disease palms can only be identified in the young plantings and are culled and replaced. Estimations of genetic variance and heritability have been attempted by oil palm breeders to provide information to guide them to increased breeding efficiency. General combining ability (GCA) is the mean progeny performance of a parent or line in all its crosses. Estimates of genetic covariance and correlations are seldom attempted in oil palm unless needed in the development of selection index (SI) and best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP).
