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Genome-wide association mapping of agronomic and morphologic traits in highly structured populations of barley cultivars

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An Erratum to this article was published on 28 December 2011

Abstract

Genome-wide association study (GWAS) has become an obvious general approach for studying traits of agricultural importance in higher plants, especially crops. Here, we present a GWAS of 32 morphologic and 10 agronomic traits in a collection of 615 barley cultivars genotyped by genome-wide polymorphisms from a recently developed barley oligonucleotide pool assay. Strong population structure effect related to mixed sampling based on seasonal growth habit and ear row number is present in this barley collection. Comparison of seven statistical approaches in a genome-wide scan for significant associations with or without correction for confounding by population structure, revealed that in reducing false positive rates while maintaining statistical power, a mixed linear model solution outperforms genomic control, structured association, stepwise regression control and principal components adjustment. The present study reports significant associations for sixteen morphologic and nine agronomic traits and demonstrates the power and feasibility of applying GWAS to explore complex traits in highly structured plant samples.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by research grants for the ‘Association Genetics of UK Elite Barley’ project, which was funded by BBSRC and RERAD as part of the Sustainable Arable LINK programme with industrial support from HGCA, KWS (UK), LS Plant Breeding, Syngenta Seeds, Groupe Limagrain, Secobra UK, Svalof Weibull, Perten Instruments AB, The Maltsters Association of Great Britain, The Scotch Whisky Research Institute and Campden BRi. ZWL is also supported by the Leverhulme Trust (RCEJ1471) of UK, NSFC (31071084) and The Basic Research Program (2012CB316505) of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Minghui Wang, Ning Jiang, Tianye Jia & Zewei Luo

  2. BioSS Unit, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee, DD2 5DA, UK

    Ning Jiang, Robbie Waugh, Luke Ramsay & Bill Thomas

  3. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, UK

    Lindsey Leach

  4. John Bingham Laboratory, National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Cambridge, CB3 0LE, UK

    James Cockram

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  1. Minghui Wang
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Correspondence to Zewei Luo.

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Communicated by J. Yu.

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00122-011-1771-9

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Wang, M., Jiang, N., Jia, T. et al. Genome-wide association mapping of agronomic and morphologic traits in highly structured populations of barley cultivars. Theor Appl Genet 124, 233–246 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-011-1697-2

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