Most standard QTL mapping procedures apply to populations derived from the cross of two parents. QTL detected from such biparental populations are rarely relevant to breeding programs because of the narrow genetic basis: only two alleles are involved per locus. To improve the generality and applicability of mapping results, QTL should be detected using populations initiated from multiple parents, such as the multiparent advanced generation intercross (MAGIC) populations. The greatest challenges of QTL mapping in MAGIC populations come from multiple founder alleles and control of the genetic background information. We developed a random-model methodology by treating the founder effects of each locus as random effects following a normal distribution with a locus-specific variance. We also fit a polygenic effect to the model to control the genetic background. To improve the statistical power for a scanned marker, we release the marker effect absorbed by the polygene back to the model. In contrast to the fixed-model approach, we estimate and test the variance of each locus and scan the entire genome one locus at a time using likelihood-ratio test statistics. Simulation studies showed that this method can increase statistical power and reduce type I error compared with composite interval mapping (CIM) and multiparent whole-genome average interval mapping (MPWGAIM). We demonstrated the method using a public Arabidopsis thaliana MAGIC population and a mouse MAGIC population.

Many statistical methods are available for genomic selection (GS) through which genetic values of quantitative traits are predicted for plants and animals using whole-genome SNP data. A large number of predictors with much fewer subjects become a major computational challenge in GS. Principal components regression (PCR) and its derivative, i.e., partial least squares regression (PLSR), provide a solution through dimensionality reduction. In this study, we show that PCR can perform better than PLSR in cross validation. PCR often requires extracting more components to achieve the maximum predictive ability than PLSR and thus may be associated with a higher computational cost. However, application of the HAT method (a strategy of describing the relationship between the fitted and observed response variables with a hat matrix) to PCR circumvents conventional cross validation in testing predictive ability, resulting in substantially improved computational efficiency over PLSR where cross validation is mandatory. Advantages of PCR over PLSR are illustrated with a simulated trait of a hypothetical population and four agronomical traits of a rice population. The benefit of using PCR in genomic selection is further demonstrated in an effort to predict 1000 metabolomic traits and 24,973 transcriptomic traits in the same rice population.

Identification of trait-associated metabolites will advance the knowledge and understanding of the biosynthetic and catabolic pathways that are relevant to the complex traits of interest. In the past, the association between metabolites (treated as quantitative traits) and genetic variants (e.g., SNPs) has been extensively studied using metabolomic quantitative trait locus (mQTL) mapping. Nevertheless, the research on the association between metabolites with agronomic traits has been inadequate. In practice, the regular approaches for QTL mapping analysis may be adopted for metabolites-phenotypes association analysis due to the similarity in data structure of these two types of researches. In the study, we compared four regular QTL mapping approaches, i.e., simple linear regression (LR), linear mixed model (LMM), Bayesian analysis with spike-slab priors (Bayes B) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), by testing their performances on the analysis of metabolome-phenotype associations. Simulation studies showed that LASSO had the higher power and lower false positive rate than the other three methods. We investigated the associations of 839 metobolites with five agronomic traits in a collection of 533 rice varieties. The results implied that a total of 25 metabolites were significantly associated with five agronomic traits. Literature search and bioinformatics analysis indicated that the identified 25 metabolites are significantly involved in some growth and development processes potentially related to agronomic traits. We also explored the predictability of agronomic traits based on the 839 metabolites through cross-validation, which showed that metabolomic prediction was efficient and its application in plant breeding has been justified.

Knowledge of the genetic architecture of importantly agronomical traits can speed up genetic improvement in cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.). Many recent investigations have leveraged genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), associated with agronomic traits in various rice populations. The reported trait-relevant SNPs appear to be arbitrarily distributed along the genome, including genic and nongenic regions. Whether the SNPs in different genomic regions play different roles in trait heritability and which region is more responsible for phenotypic variation remains opaque. We analyzed a natural rice population of 524 accessions with 3,616,597 SNPs to compare the genetic contributions of functionally distinct genomic regions for five agronomic traits, i.e., yield, heading date, plant height, grain length, and grain width. An analysis of heritability in the functionally partitioned rice genome showed that regulatory or intergenic regions account for the most trait heritability. A close look at the trait-associated SNPs (TASs) indicated that the majority of the TASs are located in nongenic regions, and the genetic effects of the TASs in nongenic regions are generally greater than those in genic regions. We further compared the predictabilities using the genetic variants from genic regions with those using nongenic regions. The results revealed that nongenic regions play a more important role than genic regions in trait heritability in rice, which is consistent with findings in humans and maize. This conclusion not only offers clues for basic research to disclose genetics behind these agronomic traits, but also provides a new perspective to facilitate genomic selection in rice.

Genomic prediction benefits hybrid rice breeding by increasing selection intensity and accelerating breeding cycles. With the rapid advancement of technology, other omic data, such as metabolomic data and transcriptomic data, are readily available for predicting breeding values for agronomically important traits. In this study, the best prediction strategies were determined for yield, 1000 grain weight, number of grains per panicle, and number of tillers per plant of hybrid rice (derived from recombinant inbred lines) by comprehensively evaluating all possible combinations of omic datasets with different prediction methods. It was demonstrated that, in rice, the predictions using a combination of genomic and metabolomic data generally produce better results than single-omics predictions or predictions based on other combined omic data. Best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) appears to be the most efficient prediction method compared to the other commonly used approaches, including least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), stochastic search variable selection (SSVS), support vector machines with radial basis function and epsilon regression (SVM-R(EPS)), support vector machines with radial basis function and nu regression (SVM-R(NU)), support vector machines with polynomial kernel and epsilon regression (SVM-P(EPS)), support vector machines with polynomial kernel and nu regression (SVM-P(NU)) and partial least squares regression (PLS). This study has provided guidelines for selection of hybrid rice in terms of which types of omic datasets and which method should be used to achieve higher trait predictability. The answer to these questions will benefit academic research and will also greatly reduce the operative cost for the industry which specializes in breeding and selection.