Table 3. Proportion of phenotypic variance attributable to the twelve identified QTL regions.

Chromosome	Candidate gene	QTL-region [Basepairs]	Number of SNPs within the QTL-region	Proportion of phenotypic variance explained [%]
2	MCM6	59,128,137–64,128,137	1541	1.092
	PAX3	108,706,088–113,706,088	1356	2.129
5	KITLG	15,706,817–20,706,817	1334	7.869
	ERBB3	55,054,914–60,054,914	820	1.493
6	DKK2, LEF1	16,475,451–21,475,451	1501	1.077
	KIT	69,882,208–74,882,208	1593	14.560
11	CRIM1	16,844,832–21,844,832	1514	0.857
13	ATRN	49,394,994–54,394,994	910	2.598
14	GSDMC	9,575,830–14,575,830	1384	1.398
22	-	25,431,961–30,431,961	1334	0.002
	MITF	29,745,023–34,745,023	1356	11.332
	NBEAL2	50,516,253–55,516,253	1507	0.548

A 5 Mb interval centred on the most significantly associated SNP was considered as QTL-region.

The genomic relationship matrix for each QTL was built based upon SNPs within the 5 Mb interval.

The proportion of phenotypic variance explained was then estimated with the effects off all chromosomes and QTL fitted simultaneously.