High-dimensional multi-omics measured in controlled conditions are useful for maize platform and field trait predictions

The effects of climate change in the form of drought, heat stress, and irregular seasonal changes threaten global crop production. The ability of multi-omics data, such as transcripts and proteins, to reflect a plants response to such climatic factors can be capitalized in prediction models to maximize crop improvement. Implementing multi-omics characterization in routine field evaluations is challenging due to high costs. It is, however, possible to do it on reference genotypes in controlled conditions. Using omics measured on a platform, we tested different multi-omics-based prediction approaches, with and without pedo-climatic data, using a high dimensional linear mixed model (MegaLMM) to predict genotypes for platform traits and agronomic field traits in a hybrid panel of 244 maize Dent lines crossed to a Flint tester. We considered two prediction scenarios: in the first one, new hybrids are predicted (CV1), and in the second one, partially observed hybrids are predicted (CV2). For both scenarios, all hybrids were characterized for omics on the platform. We observed that omics can predict both additive and non-additive genetic effects for the platform traits, resulting in much higher predictive abilities than GBLUP. This highlights their efficiency in capturing regulation processes in relation to the growth conditions. For the field traits, we observed that only the additive components of omics were useful and only slightly improved predictive abilities for predicting new hybrids (CV1, model MegaGAO) and for predicting partially observed hybrids (CV2, model GAOxW-BLUP) in comparison to GBLUP. We conclude that measuring the omics in the fields would be of considerable interest for predicting productivity, if the omics costs were to drop significantly. Our study confirms the potential of omics to predict additive and non-additive genetic effects, resulting in a potentially high increase in predictive abilities compared to standard genomic prediction models. Key MessageTranscriptomics and proteomics information collected on a platform can predict additive and non-additive effects for platform traits and additive effects for field traits.