ABSTRACT
The genetic resources of crop species represent a reservoir of genes conferring resistance to viral, fungal and other diseases (Kuraparthy et al., 2009; Mew et al., 2004; Poland et al., 2009; Sip et al., 2004) and tolerance to various abiotic stresses (Ashraf and Akram, 2009), as well as encoding other economically valuable traits (Ovesna et al., 2006). A number of non-crop plant species are also of value as sources of pharmaceutically active compounds (Li and Vederas, 2009) and other ne biochemicals used in industry (Carpita and McCann, 2008; Spiertz and Ewert, 2009). Germplasm accessions typically need to be characterized both in the eld (Anothai et al., 2009; Janovska et al., 2007) and in the laboratory (Engindeniz et al., 2010; Hornickova et al., 2009; Nevo and Chen, 2010; Wei et al., 2010). The assessment of genetic diversity relies both on phenotype and genotype, the latter generally being accomplished using one or several DNA-based assays (Laurentin, 2009; Ovesna et al., 2001; Roussel et al., 2005; Rout and Mohapatra, 2006; Shegwu et al., 2003). A combination of genotypic and phenotypic assessments can be used to uncover an association between a genetic marker(s) and a specic trait, based on genetic linkage (Araus et al., 2008; Duran et al., 2009; Todorovska et al., 2009). Where markers can be shown to be linked to a useful trait, they can then be used as a selection tool to transfer the trait between breeding lines (Landjeva et al., 2007; Ordon et al., 2009; Varshney and Dubey, 2009).
