Patent ID: 8039686

Claim:
A method for ensuring the validity of a correspondence between at least one marker and at least one phenotype, the method comprising: providing a recursively determined estimate of correlation between at least one marker and at least one phenotype across a plurality of plant populations, which plant populations collectively comprise progeny of a plurality of biparental crosses, wherein the recursively determined estimate of correlation is provided by: a) providing a first estimate of QTL allele effects demonstrating a correlation between an allele of the at least one marker and the at least one phenotype in a plurality of plants; b) selecting at least one plant, which at least one plant is optionally selected from the plurality of plants of step a), with the allele of the at least one QTL marker; c) crossing the selected plant to generate a population of progeny; d) estimating a correlation between an allele of the same or different at least one marker and the at least one phenotype in the population of progeny of step c), thereby generating a second estimate of QTL allele effects; e) updating the first estimate of QTL allele effects to generate a first updated estimate of QTL allele effects, thereby ensuring the correspondence between the at least one marker and the phenotype; f) selecting at least one member of the population of progeny a desired allele of at least one marker validated according to the updated estimate of QTL allele effects; and, g) optionally repeating steps c) through f) one or more times to generate at least one subsequent population of progeny.