Developing single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP)

markers for adaptive variation in forest trees

It is important for tree breeding, for conservation genetics and for the study of evolutionary questions to find the loci controlling variation in adaptively important traits. Recently methods have been developed that rely on finding associations between the traits and nucleotide variation at the loci themselves, or at other associated (tightly linked) nucleotide sites. The statistical methods used have been developed mainly for human populations, where strong population structure gives rise to difficulties in avoiding spurious associations. Forest trees provide favorable opportunities for these kind of studies. In many traits, there are strong environmentally varying clines, while the rest of the genome is rather uniform over large areas. We use this situation to test association mapping in the search for the loci governing these adaptive traits.