Author(s)

Shouqian Feng, Xiaoliu Chen, Shujing Wu, Xuesen Chen^*

The State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology; National Research Center for Apple Engineering and Technology, College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, China.

Although heterosis is widely utilized in crop production, its genetic and molecular basis is still elusive. It is arguably that heterosis arises in crosses between genetically and/or epigenetically distinct individuals. Various genetic models have been proposed to explain heterosis, such as dominance and overdominance hypothesis. With the recent advancements in functional genomics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics-related technologies, systems-level approaches have been adopted to understand the molecular basis of heterosis. In this review, we gather a brief account of findings from various studies in order to better understand the genetic and molecular basis of heterosis.

Heterosis, Genetic Factor, Epigenetic Factor

Feng, S. , Chen, X. , Wu, S. and Chen, X. (2015) Recent Advances in Understanding Plant Heterosis. Agricultural Sciences, 6, 1033-1038. doi: 10.4236/as.2015.69098.