Estimation of Molecular Pairwise Relatedness in Autopolyploid Crops

In this study, we provide guidelines for plant geneticists and breeders to access trustworthy pairwise relatedness estimates. To this end, we simulated populations considering different ploidy levels, meiotic pairings patterns, number of loci and alleles, and inbreeding levels. Analysis were performed to access the accuracy of distinct methods and to demonstrate the usefulness of molecular marker in practical situations. Overall, our results suggest that at least 100 effective biallelic molecular markers are required to have good pairwise relatedness estimation if methods based on correlation is used. For this number of loci, current methods based on multiallelic markers show lower performance than biallelic ones. To estimate relatedness in cases of inbreeding or close relationships (as parent-offspring, full-sibs, or half-sibs) is more challenging. Methods to estimate pairwise relatedness based on molecular markers, for different ploidy levels or pedigrees were implemented in the AGHmatrix R package.

Source: G3: Genes Genomes Genetics - December 3, 2020 Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Amadeu, R. R., Lara, L. A. C., Munoz, P., Garcia, A. A. F. Tags: Investigations Source Type: research