BIO-EARN /BecA-ILRI Hub Workshop Following up on the recommendations of the BIO-EARN planning meeting held at Commonwealth Conference Resort, Kampala in November, 2008, BIO-EARN Coordination Office in partnership with BecA- Hub are organizing a Workshop for the BIO-EARN scientists. The Workshop will be held on October 12-16th at the BecA-Hub, Nairobi. This first thematic workshop will focus on application of molecular markers in Crop breeding. In addition to BIO-EARN participating scientists, the workshop will bring together leading researchers from various disciplines/approaches to harness the most recent information/technologies on crop breeding, MAS strategies for crop improvement and bioinformatics. Application of Molecular markers in Crop breeding Data analyses and Interpretation Workshop Marker assisted breeding (MAB; also called marker assisted selection-MAS, marker assisted introgression or molecular breeding) is the process of using the results of DNA tests to assist in the selection of individuals to become the parents in the next generation of a genetic improvement program. It is an approach that has been developed to avoid problems connected with conventional plant breeding by changing the selection criteria from selection of phenotypes towards selection of genes that control traits of interest, either directly or indirectly. Exploiting molecular markers in breeding involves finding a subset of markers associated with one or more QTLs that regulate the expression of complex traits. Linkage analysis and association mapping are the two most commonly used tools for dissecting complex traits. As most breeders are only involved in population development and phenotyping, they do not have hands-on experience in molecular data interpretation and analyses. This training is organized to provide BIO-EARN scientists hands-on experience in molecular data interpretation and analyses for genetic distance estimation, genetic linkage mapping, QTL mapping using both linkage-based and association mapping, marker assisted breeding for traits regulated by single gene, few major QTL and several minor QTL. The course will focus in analyzing and interpreting molecular data to be brought by each trainee using a wide range of software. The course facilitators will also prepare additional data from other projects for the course. Statistical software to be used for the course includes JoinMap for linkage mapping, PlabQTL and/or IciMapping for linkage-based QTL mapping, TASSEL for association mapping, GGT for Graphical genotyping (estimating proportion of donor and recurrent parent genome), popmin for estimating population size for MAB and two other software packages for genetic distance estimation as an aid in selecting parents for crossing. In addition, the participants will also get experience in bioinformatics (mining for markers from sequence data; primer design; molecular data acquisition, flow, tracking, and management) etc. Course Outline Theme Program / Presentation Duration Day 1 Introduction (application of molecular markers in breeding - overview) Mapping molecular markers associated with agronomic traits of interest Requirements for mapping Molecular markers and genotyping systems Linkage mapping Linkage-based QTL mapping Association mapping The rest of the day from 10 am (after welcome note, opening, logistic announcements, etc) Day 2 Application of molecular markers in breeding Markers in estimating genetic distance Markers as diagnostic tools (in tracing the presence of a gene of interest, whether the gene is homozygous or heterozygote, etc) Marker-assisted backcrossing: trait controlled by single gene or few major QTL Marker-assisted backcrossing: trait controlled by 3-5 QTL Marker-assisted recurrent selection and genome-wide selection Exercise using Graphical Genotyping Software The whole day Day 3 Practical work and demonstration (on diversity, mapping, selection) It will take one full day but the activities will be divided into 3 days (Day-1: DNA extraction; Day-2: setting up PCR and fragment separation: Day-3: data scoring and analyses). Day 4 Bioinformatics (mining for markers from sequence data; primer design; molecular data acquisition, flow, tracking, and management) etc Most of the day Day 5 more hands-on data analysis Course evaluation and discussion Wrap up session and graduation Most of the day Go to News Archives to browse all stories