Fig. 1

Simulation process to create two heterotic populations (similar to the actual Deli and La Mé oil palm breeding populations) and to compare reciprocal recurrent selection (RRS) and reciprocal recurrent genomic selection (RRGS) over four generations. Random mating allowed mutation-drift equilibrium to be achieved. Natural selection was applied to increase the bunch weight in population A and the bunch number in population B. Deli and La Mé populations originated from bottleneck events. In subsequent generations, artificial selection (mass selection, RRS or RRGS) was applied to increase bunch production, which is the bunch weight × bunch number product. Marker alleles were simulated from the start and QTL for bunch weight and bunch number were assigned after the first 2400 generations of random mating. RRS: reciprocal recurrent selection, RRGS: reciprocal recurrent genomic selection