Fig. 1.

Association mapping utilizing multiple measurements leads to an increase in power over traditional approaches. We compare the average power gain for the proposed full model with that of the average model (using averaged measurements for each individual). Power gain is defined as the ratio of the power of a given method to that achieved with the single approach (i.e., mapping with only one measurement for each individual) and was calculated by averaging power gain over 1,000 randomly selected SNPs with minor allele frequency (MAF) in the range of 1–5% and over 1,000 randomly selected covariance structures for the multiple measurements (m = 5). Simulations were performed with the environmental effect accounting for 80% of the variance while the genetic background and residual error accounted for the remaining 20%.