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Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) identified so far in Brassica were mainly generated in the final stage of plant development, which did not apply to the exploitation of genetic effects that were expressed during a specific developmental stage. Thus, the objective of this study was to simultaneously identify unconditional and conditional QTL associated with plant height at various stages of nonheading Chinese cabbage. One hundred twelve doubled haploid (DH) lines developed from the cross between nonheading Chinese cabbage lines ‘SW-13’ and ‘SU-124’ were used for QTL analysis of plant height by the composite interval mapping method combined with mixed genetic model. The map we used for QTL analysis was an updated version of the first genetic map of nonheading Chinese cabbage with 48 additional markers to the same DH population. With data from 2 years, a total of 11 unconditional QTLs in six linkage groups and 23 conditional QTLs in eight linkage groups were identified for plant height. The results indicated that the number and type of QTLs and their genetic effects for plant height were different in a series of measuring stages. Each QTL can explain 7.92% to 28.25% of the total phenotypic variation. Two QTLs (ph8-4 and ph8-5) were identified to be associated with plant height using both unconditional and conditional mapping methods simultaneously in 2 years. These results demonstrated that it is highly effective for mapping QTL of developmental traits using the unconditional and conditional analysis methodology.
Brassica rapa L. ssp. chinensis (L.) Hanelt, known as nonheading chinese cabbage in China, is an important vegetable in eastern Asia and its genetic improvement requires a genetic linkage map. The first genetic linkage map of nonheading chinese cabbage using 112 doubled haploid lines derived from a released F1 hybrid cultivar Shulü between two lines SW-3 and Su-124 was constructed in this paper. One hundred thirty-eight molecular markers were mapped into 14 linkage groups. Among these markers, there were 77 sequence-related amplified polymorphism markers, 27 simple sequence repeat markers, 21 random amplification polymorphic DNA markers, and 13 intersimple sequence repeat markers. Chi-square tests showed that 54 markers are distorted from Mendelian segregation ratios, and the direction of the distortion is mainly toward the maternal parent SW-3. The distortion affects not only the estimation of genetic distance, but also the order of distorted markers on a same linkage group. Given a specific marker order, the authors proposed a multipoint approach to correct the linkage map in an unbiased manner in an F2 population while considering distorted, dominant, and missing markers. A new method was used to correct the linkage map in the doubled haploid population mentioned earlier considering new, distorted, and missing markers. The total length of the corrected linkage map was 1923.75 cM, with an average marker spacing of 15.52 cM. The map will facilitate selective breeding and mapping of quantitative trait loci.