Our results demonstrate that the described diverse barley panel can be efficiently used for GWAS of various quantitative traits, provided that population structure is appropriately taken into account.
Multiple genetic determinants are each likely to contribute to the apparent difference in fitness between Amerind and European or hybrid strains, as is the case with many quantitative traits in diverse organisms [58].
Henceforth, our proposed integrated strategy can be employed for rapid identification of major potential genes, QTLs and alleles associated with qualitative as well as quantitative traits in diverse crop plants.
A study conducted by Jahn et al. [ 19] reported that the percentage variance for photosynthesis was highest among 20 diverse rice varieties based on 14 quantitative traits.
In just the last few years, GWAS have been used to identify hundreds of variants affecting a diverse range of common diseases and disease associated quantitative traits (for a summary, see http://www.genome.gov/gwastudies/).gov/gwastudies/
In this study, we performed a GWAS to detect genome regions controlling the quantitative traits, seed protein and oil content, using 42,368 SNP markers in a genetically diverse set of the 298 soybean germplasm accessions.
This will further assist us to extrapolate the molecular mechanism underlying complex quantitative traits at a genome-wide scale leading to fast-paced marker-assisted genetic improvement in diverse crop plants, including chickpea.
Beyond a platform to enhance variation for diverse agricultural traits, our findings provide a foundation for dissecting complex relationships between gene-regulatory changes and control of quantitative traits.
Discrete or discontinuous traits contrast with continuous or quantitative traits.
Examples of quantitative traits are height, body weight, etc.
