“…Yield improvement in alfalfa has stalled for the past 20–30 yr (Brummer & Casler, 2014), with an increment of only ∼0.50% per year (Annicchiarico, Barrett, et al., 2015; Lamb et al., 2006). Given its importance, DMY has received attention by various breeding programs in recent years (Acharya et al., 2020; Adhikari et al., 2019; Biswas et al., 2021; dos Santos et al., 2018; Sakiroglu & Brummer, 2017). The low rate of yield progress can be ascribed to the perennial nature of alfalfa (long breeding cycles), the harvesting of the entire plant (and hence the inability to make gains in harvest index), multiple harvests per year, the high genotype by environment interaction (G×E), the high costs of phenotyping, tetrasomic inheritance, and the high level of non‐additive variance (Acharya et al., 2016, 2020; Annicchiarico, Barrett, et al., 2015).…”