Abstract: Systems and methods for use in identifying weights to be employed in a selection algorithm associated with plant advancement are disclosed. One example method includes identifying a start set of weights for a selection algorithm associated with a breeding program, and for each scale parameter value in a schedule, and for each of N iterations, modifying the start set of weights based on the scale parameter value, identifying a set of germplasm based on at least the modified set of weights, advancing the modified set of weights to a next iteration as the start set of weights when certain criteria are satisfied, and identifying the modified set of weights as an output when the iteration is equal to N.