Seedling development traits in Brassica napus examined by gene expression analysis and association mapping.

Background An optimal seedling development of Brassica napus plants leads to a higher yield stability even under suboptimal growing conditions and has therefore a high importance for plant breeders. The objectives of our study were to (i) examine the expression levels of candidate genes in seedling leaves of B. napus and correlate these with seedling development as well as (ii) detect genome regions associated with gene expression levels and seedling development traits in B. napus by genome-wide association mapping.