Heterotic Haplotype Capture: precision breeding for hybrid performance

•The concept of HHC is introduced.•In HHC, genome sequence imputation is used to trace novel heterozygous chromosome blocks.•This helps understand and predict hybrid performance in large, structured populations of hybrids.

The need to improve hybrid performance, abiotic stress tolerance, and disease resistance without compromising seed quality makes the targeted capture of untapped diversity a major objective for crop breeders. Here we introduce the concept of Heterotic Haplotype Capture (HHC), in which genome sequence imputation is used to trace novel heterozygous chromosome blocks contributing to hybrid performance in large, structured populations of interrelated F1 hybrids containing interesting new diversity for breeding.