Plant Breeding: Markers in Quantitative Genetics and Plant Breeding

If you are a working professional in the plant breeding sector, this course is the perfect opportunity for you to expand your knowledge and sharpen your skills. This comprehensive course will provide you with the tools you need to succeed and advance in your career, especially in combination with other advanced Online Master's Courses Plant Breeding.

Prerequisite knowledge
You should have sufficient knowledge on concepts and methodologies related to plant biology, such as genetics, plant breeding, plant physiology and molecular biology. If you are lacking certain knowledge or skills listed above, we strongly recommend you join the course "Principles of Plant Breeding" and/or "Advanced Statistics" first (can be found under Related courses in the right-hand column). It's important to realise that, if you do not comply with these recommendations, you cannot claim extra support from the instructor and cannot claim a refund of the registration fee, if you decide to discontinue the course.

• Understand how genetic markers are developed, assessed and used in genetic research and breeding
• Analyse genetic segregations, including cases where genetic linkage occurs
• Comprehend and contrast the inheritance of qualitative vs. quantitative traits and the consequences for plant breeding
• Use quantitative genetics models and statistical methods to quantify additive effects and genetic variance, dominance effects and variance, dominance ratio and heritability in basic breeding and research populations
• Understand and be able to calculate the response to selection and a correlated response to selection
• Understand the concepts and interpret analyses of a QTL study, Genome Wide Association Studies and genomic prediction

In this course, participants will be made familiar with the use of molecular markers in genetic research and plant breeding, the estimation of genetic distance based on marker genotype frequencies in different types of segregating populations, the construction of linkage maps, concepts and applications of quantitative genetics, the analysis of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and the discovery and application of markers in research and for selection in breeding programs, both for qualitative and quantitative traits.

This course is an online course at master level that you follow in a cohort. Learners participate at different time points and from different time zones, as most learners also have a job. The programme therefor offers learning activities that allow you to supervised self-study at your own pace, with deadlines for assignments, and includes knowledge clips, e-learning modules, read literature, online individual and group exercises and assignments, online discussions, and in some courses occasionally live question hours through MS Teams at specific dates and times. There are no online live classes. The exam has a fixed date.

Literature
Scientific papers, texts of Piet Stam on mapping and QTL analysis and Kearsey and Pooni, The Genetical analysis of quantitative traits, Chapters 1 - 4.3, 15.5 to 15.8 as course reference book and for more in-depth knowledge. Links to relevant papers and articles will be provided through the online learning environment.

This course is quite time-intensive and requires approximately 20 hours per week for the average participant. There are assignments with deadlines.

Software used in this course:
R, including R studio.

Self-Paced Online Course Getting Started with R
You need to have a good basic understanding of statistics, and you need to have experience with software 'R'. If the latter is not the case, you can follow the Self-Paced Online Course Getting Started with R first. For more information and registration, please check the document linked below.

This course fits logically after the online Master's Course Germplasm and Seed Technology or the online Master's Course Breeding for Quality.

Upon successful completion - passing the exam -, a digital Micro-credentials certificate (EduBadge) with 4 study credits (ECTS) is issued. The EduBadge certifies the learning outcomes of short-term learning experiences, marking the quality of a course.

Participation in the remotely proctored exam is optional. If you decide not to participate in the exam, you do not qualify for a certificate and/or micro-credential.

The date of examination is 3 July 2025 from 08:30 - 22:00 (Amsterdam Time Zone). The duration of an exam is 3 hours. The resit is scheduled on 17 July 2025.