GGEbiplot - A windows application for graphical analysis of multienvironment trial data and other types of two-way data

Abstract

Plant breeding trials produce quantities of data and finding the useful information within that data has historically been a major challenge of plant breeding. A recently developed graphical data summary, called GGEbiplot, can aid in data exploration. GGEbiplot is a Windows application that performs biplot analysis of two-way data that assume an entry X tester structure. GGEbiplot analyzes the data and outputs the results as an image, and it also produces an interactive show of the data. It allows interactive visualization of the biplot from various perspectives. A multienvironment trial data set, in which cultivars are entries and environments are testers, was used to demonstrate the functions of GGEbiplot. These include but are not limited to: (i) ranking the cultivars based on their performance in any given environment, (ii) ranking the environments based on the relative performance of any given cultivar, (iii) comparing the performance of any pair of cultivars in different environments, (iv) identifying the best cultivar in each environment, (v) grouping the environments based on the best cultivars, (vi) evaluating the cultivars based on both average yield and stability, (vii) evaluating the environments based on both discriminating ability and representativeness, and (viii) visualizing all of these aspects for a subset of the data by removing some of the cultivars or environments. GGEbiplot has been applied to visual analysis of genotype X environment data, genotype X trait data, genotype X marker data, and diallel cross data.