G C A T T A C G G C A T genes Article Major QTLs for Trunk Height and Correlated Agronomic Traits Provide Insights into Multiple Trait Integration in Oil Palm Breeding Chee-Keng Teh 1,2,* , Ai-Ling Ong 1,2 , Sean Mayes 3 , Festo Massawe 2 and David Ross Appleton 1 1 Biotechnology & Breeding Department, Sime Darby Plantation R&D Centre, Serdang 43400, Selangor State, Malaysia;
[email protected] (A.-L.O.);
[email protected] (D.R.A.) 2 School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih 43500, Selangor State, Malaysia;
[email protected] 3 School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Leicestershire LE12 5RD, UK;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 7 May 2020; Accepted: 16 June 2020; Published: 21 July 2020 Abstract: Superior oil yield is always the top priority of the oil palm industry. Short trunk height (THT) and compactness traits have become increasingly important to improve harvesting efficiency since the industry started to suffer yield losses due to labor shortages. Breeding populations with low THT and short frond length (FL) are actually available, such as Dumpy AVROS pisifera (DAV) and Gunung Melayu dura (GM). However, multiple trait stacking still remains a challenge for oil palm breeding, which usually requires 12–20 years to complete a breeding cycle. In this study, yield and height increment in the GM GM (GM-3341) and the GM DAV (GM-DAV-3461) crossing × × programs were evaluated and palms with good yield and smaller height increment were identified.