Association analysis of vegetable soybean quality traits with SSR markers.

摘要

Association mapping is a useful alternative to linkage mapping for the detection of marker-phenotype associations. The main objective of this study is to identify simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers associated with the vegetable soybean quality traits of 100-pod weight, 100-seed weight, sucrose content and free amino acid content. The four quality traits were evaluated in 323 soybean cultivar accessions from China, and the 323 accessions were genotyped with 101 SSR markers. Analysis of population structure revealed two subgroups in the population. The mean linkage disequilibrium (LD) value (D') for all statistically significant loci pairs was 0.258. The decay of the LD based on the D' value showed little change with the increasing genetic distance between pairs. A total of 79 marker-trait associations related to the four traits were identified, involving 44 different SSR markers. According to the results, the association analysis approach in this study can be an effective method for quantitative trait loci mapping and can help breeders to develop new strategies for improving vegetable soybean quality. copyright 2011 Blackwell Verlag GmbH.