ISHS Acta Horticulturae 546: International Symposium on Molecular Markers for Characterizing Genotypes and Identifying Cultivars in Horticulture
CONCEPTUAL AND STATISTICAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE USE OF MOLECULAR MARKERS FOR DISTINCTNESS AND ESSENTIAL DERIVATION |
| Authors: | F.A. van Eeuwijk, C.P. Baril |
| Abstract:
An exhibition is given of old and new statistical procedures for dealing with marker information in the context of distinctness testing and assessing genetic conformity for essential derivation purposes. Conceptual issues are discussed in relation to statistical methods. It is believed that the most important statistical and conceptual difference between distinctness and conformity testing resides in the wording of null and alternative hypotheses. For distinctness testing, the null hypothesis states no difference between varieties, while the alternative implies the existence of a difference. For conformity testing, null and alternative hypothesis are non-equivalence and equivalence, respectively. The reversal of null and alternative hypothesis has rather limited statistical consequences when test statistics are distance measures. Characteristically, morphological characters form the preferred traits for assessing distinctness, while molecular markers are chosen for assessing conformity. From a statistical point of view this difference is rather immaterial. Distinctness and conformity are throughout presented as two closely related concepts, whose assessment takes place by highly comparable statistical procedures. Specific topics that are addressed in the paper are first the present positions of UPOV and ASSINSEL. Subsequently, uni- and multivariate methods for distinctness and conformity are treated, separately for genetically homogeneous and heterogeneous varieties. Lastly, the choice of markers is discussed, as are the relations between morphological, marker and pedigree information. | |
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