A panel of elite accessions of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) suitable for association mapping studies

The effectiveness of association mapping (AM) based on linkage disequilibrium (LD) is currently beingtestedinanumberofcrops.AnimportantprerequisitefortheapplicationofAMistheavailabilityofcollectionsofaccessionswithasuitablelevelofgeneticvariationfortargettraitsandwith limited spurious LD due to the presence of population structure. Herein, the results of a genomewide molecular characterization of a collection of elite durum wheat accessions well-adapted to Mediterranean environments are presented. Ninety-seven highly polymorphic simple sequence repeats and 166 amplified fragment length polymorphism markers were used to characterize 189 durum accessions, mainly cultivars and advanced breeding lines. Genome-wide significant and sizeable LD indices at a centimorgan scale were observed, while LD mainly decayed within 10cM. On the other hand, effects due to spurious LD were notably lower than those previously observed in a durum wheat collection sampling durum gene pools of more diverse origin.