Abstract: Both conditional and unconditional analysis methods were applied to estimate the genetic main effects and the genotype × environment (GE) interaction effects of embryo(cotyledon), cytoplasm and maternal plant at different developmental periods after anthesis on glycine content (GC) of rapeseed meal using two-year experimental data. The results showed that glysine content in rapeseed meal was simultaneously controlled by the genetic main effects and their GE interaction effects from different genetic systems, especially for the GE interaction effects. Therefore, the expression of genes conferring GC in the different genetic systems could be significantly influenced by the environment. Except for the embryo effects at 36 day after flowering was larger among the different genetic components, both maternal dominance effects and maternal additive interaction effect were more visible. The conditional statistical analysis revealed that the new expression of quantitative genes on GC trait was active both at early and medium-term of rapeseed development stages, especially at medium\|term stage the net genetic effects on glysine content reached a relatively higher value, due to a lager number of polygenes actively expressed. The total narrow sense heritability of GC was high, of which the maternal and cytoplasmic heritability were important during rapeseed development. It was suggested that GC could be efficiently improved when selection is based on the holistic performance of mature maternal plants at early generations．

Key words: rapeseed (Brassica napus L.), glycine content, developmental genetics, genetic main effects, genotype × environment interaction effects, heritability