Approximate analysis of QTL-environment interaction with no limits on the number of environments

An approach is presented here for quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping analysis that allows for QTL x environment (E) interaction across multiple environments, without necessarily increasing the number of parameters. The main distinction of the proposed model is in the chosen way of approximation of the dependence of putative QTL effects on environmental states. We hypothesize that environmental dependence of a putative QTL effect can be represented as a function of environmental mean value of the trait. Such a description can be applied to take into account the effects of any cosegregating QTLs from other genomic regions that also may vary across environments. The conducted Monte-Carlo simulations and the example of barley multiple environments experiment demonstrate a high potential of the proposed approach for analyzing QTL x E interaction, although the results are only approximated by definition. However, this drawback is compensated by the possibility to utilize information from a potentially unlimited number of environments with a remarkable reduction in the number of parameters, as compared to previously proposed mapping models with QTL x E interactions.