Fig. 2. Probability of detection of a QTL within different experimental designs.

The founders are assumed to be randomly selected from a source population in which a bi-allelic causal variant segregates at a particular minor allele frequency (MAF). Detection probability reflects both the number of founders that vary at the causal locus (calculated using binomial sampling) and the corresponding mapping power within the experimental population, which was calculated using a significance threshold of 10⁻⁴ and assuming that 5% of the phenotypic variation in a bi-parental population would be explained by the QTL: ${\mathrm{\beta }}_{QTL}^2=0.2$, ${\mathrm{\sigma }}^2={\mathrm{\sigma }}_{QTL}^2+0.95$ see Eq. (1).