maxRgain—An R Package for Maximising Genetic Gains in Polyclonal Selection

ABSTRACT Polyclonal selection, which was developed in the context of ancient grapevine varieties, uses intravarietal variability to improve the resilience and sustainability of viticulture. Based on quantitative genetics and linear mixed models, this approach predicts genotypic effects to select a group of clones that, as a whole, satisfy target criteria for certain traits. A new method using integer programming was recently proposed to maximise the genetic gains in target traits resulting from selecting a group of genotypes, subject to user‐defined constraints. The maxRgain R package implements this method, providing a reproducible tool for predicting the genetics gains for target traits by selecting groups of clones in ancient grapevine varieties. This study presents the main features of the package and discusses several practical examples, illustrating its usefulness in selecting groups of genotypes based on multiple traits.