Double-pair mating (DPM) is a mating (crossing) design used in

plant breeding Plant breeding is the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. It has been used to improve the quality of nutrition in products for humans and animals. The goals of plant breeding are to produce cro ...

. Each individual is mated with two others.

Principles

In Fig. 1 a connected variant of DPM is shown. DPM is an efficient mating design in balanced breeding programmes, where equal contribution from each breeding population member is desired. With DPM the number of new families created is equal to the number of individuals mated. DPM allows to efficiently utilise positive

assortative mating Assortative mating (also referred to as positive assortative mating or homogamy) is a mating pattern and a form of sexual selection in which individuals with similar phenotypes or genotypes mate with one another more frequently than would be exp ...

for more efficient use of the breeding population members for deployment to seed

orchards An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of larg ...

.Ruotsalainen, S. 2002. Managing breeding stock in the initiation of a long-term tree breeding program. PhD-thesis. Finnish Forest Research Institute, Research Papers 875., 95 + 61

/ref> In comparison with single pair mating, DPM has the advantages that the genes from the individual are transmitted to next generation even if one of the crosses fails; that safer estimates of breeding values of the parents get possible (useful for

seed orchard A seed orchard is an intensively-managed plantation of specifically arranged trees for the mass production of genetically improved seeds to create plants, or seeds for the establishment of new forests. General Seed orchards are a common method of ...

s, where tested trees are preferred); and that genes from different ancestors have a better chance to combine.

References

Breeding Plant breeding {{forestry-stub