Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference

January 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

FlexQTL Software: Efficient Estimation Of Identity By Descent Probabilities And QTL Mapping In Pedigreed Populations

Marco C.A.M. Bink

  Biometris, Wageningen University and Research centre P.O. Box 100 6700 AC Wageningen, The Netherlands

In this presentation we will highlight the statistical framework and software implementation thereof (called FlexQTL) to estimate Identity By Descent (IBD) probabilities in pedigreed populations.
Ongoing breeding programs likely produce multiple generations of individuals that are routinely phenotyped for many traits. These valuable data may be exploited for QTL mapping purposes when breeders accurately keep pedigree records and DNA available for molecular marker genotyping. The pedigree and marker genotypes allows tracebility of IBD-chromosomal regions among any arbitrary pair of individuals within the pedigree. So, transmission of important founder alleles can be studied by visualisation of the IBD probabilities. Furthermore, testing associations between the transmission of founder alleles and variation in phenotypic traits may reveal QTLs that are still segregating in the breeding program.