An overview of statistical methods to detect and understand genotype-by-environment interaction and QTL-by-environment interaction

SummaryGenotype-by-environment interaction (GEI) is frequently encountered in multi-environment trials, and represents differential responses of genotypes across environments. With the development of molecular markers and mapping techniques, researchers can go one step further and analyse the whole genome to detect specific locations of genes which influence a quantitative trait such as yield. Such a location is called a quantitative trait locus (QTL), and when these QTLs have different expression across environments we talk about QTL-by-environment interaction (QEI), which is the basis of GEI. Good understanding of these interactions enables researchers to select better genotypes across different environmental conditions, and consequently to improve crops in developed and developing countries. In this paper we present an overview of statistical methods and models commonly used to detect and to understand GEI and QEI, ranging from the simple joint regression model to complex eco-physiological genotype-to-phenotype simulation models.

A Mixed-Model Approach to Mapping Quantitative Trait Loci in Barley on the Basis of Multiple Environment Data

In this article, I propose a mixed-model method to detect QTL with significant mean effect across environments and to characterize the stability of effects across multiple environments. I demonstrate the method using the barley dataset by the North American Barley Genome Mapping Project. The analysis raises the need for mixed modeling in two different ways. First, it is reasonable to regard environments as a random sample from a population of target environments. Thus, environmental main effects and QTL-by-environment interaction effects are regarded as random. Second, I expect a genetic correlation among pairs of environments caused by undetected QTL. I show how random QTL-by-environment effects as well as genetic correlations are straightforwardly handled in a mixed-model framework. The main advantage of this method is the ability to assess the stability of QTL effects. Moreover, the method allows valid statistical inferences regarding average QTL effects.