ABSTRACT
Genetic mapping is an important tool for dissecting the genetic basis of complex traits and locating the genes responsible for controlling these traits to a chromosome by associating the genetic and phenotypic variation found between related individuals. This process involves the construction of a linkage map based on the segregation of polymorphic marker loci in a mapping population derived by crossing two individuals. The map represents the location of genetic markers along the chromosomes as calculated by determining linkage through the frequency of recombination events that occur between loci in the population. The linkage map can be used to localize candidate genes governing an individual trait as single loci or quantitative trait loci (QTL; Collard et al. 2005). Linkage maps are also important in comparative evolutionary studies, positional cloning, and anchoring the physical map for genome sequencing (Snowdon and Friedt 2004).
