QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation Three Day Course in Perth, Australia

QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation Three Day Course was conducted in the University of Western Australia, Perth, 6 to 8 February 2013. The workshop was organized and sponsored by the International Centre for Plant Breeding Education and Research (ICPBER), The University of Western Australia. This is the eleventh series training course on QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation. Contents of the course included applied population and quantitative genetics, estimation of recombination between two linked loci, construction of genetic linkage maps, principles of QTL mapping and statistical comparison of different mapping methods, identification of quantitative trait genes with additive (and dominance) effects, identification of quantitative trait genes with epistasis effects, QTL by environment analysis, modeling of plant breeding, comparison and optimization of plant breeding strategies, integration of known gene information into conventional plant breeding.

 

There were 35 participants from Australia. For each morning/afternoon, two 50-minute lectures were firstly given, followed by practical and exercise. The opening lecture titled Genomics and Its Applications in Plant Breeding was delivered by Dr. Rudi Appels, Centre for Comparative Genomics, Murdoch University. Most other lectures were delivered by Dr. Jiankang Wang, and most practicals and exercises were led by Dr. Parwinder Kaur. QTL IciMapping version 3.3 (to be released soon) was used on this course. The participants highly valued the newly-added functionalities in this version, such as the removal of redundant markers, consensus map construction, ANOVA of multi-environmental trials etc.