2020年5月15日，福建农林大学农学院/作物遗传育种与综合利用教育部重点实验室在国际期刊《Tropical Plant Biology》（热带植物生物学）在线发表了题为“Principles and approaches of association mapping in plant breeding”（植物育种中关联分析原理与方法）的综述论文（DOI:10.1007/s12042-020-09261-4）。该综述评述了关联分析在当前植物育种中的应用、局限性以及相对于连锁分析的优点。提炼观点如下：

1. Association mapping (AM) is an approach that accounts for thousands of polymorphisms to evaluate the effects of quantitative trait loci. It is an important method for identification of alleles and new genes as well as dissection of complex traits.

2. Association mapping is more advantageous than linkage analysis due to the comparatively high-resolution provided, which is based on the decay of linkage disequilibrium.

3. Marker density, sample sizes and population structure are among the critical factors that should be considered when association mapping is used.

4. It is necessary to note that, the choice of germplasm, genotypic and phenotypic data quality, the use of appropriate statistical analysis for marker-phenotype association detections and verifications are the key to association analysis. 

5. However, to understand association mapping application, extensive research is needed such as improvements in: computational and statistical methods, and its integration with gene annotation data or functional analysis. Rare allele/variant analysis is an important area to be considered to enhance association mapping studies. Joint linkage and association mapping has now been proposed to improve linkage-based QTL mapping and association mapping limitations.

图1 关联分析流程

福建农林大学博士研究生Aminu Kurawa Ibrahim为文章的第一作者，张立武教授为通讯作者。该研究得到国家自然科学基金项目（31771369）和国家现代农业产业技术体系建设专项（CARS-19-E06）的经费资助。

原文链接：

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12042-020-09261-4