Using miRNA in Quantitative Trait Analysis - Brassica napus

Brassica napus, commonly called rapeseed, is a crop plant used for cooking oil, biofuels, and animal feed; it is the third most consumed vegetable oil globally. Each year, agricultural companies run extensive field tests on new cultivars. To maximize the efficiency of these highly expensive field tests, NGS technology can be used to select among the candidate cultivars or potential crosses. Genomic prediction has shown great promise, but there are also complementary sources of information unlocked by NGS technologies. Here we investigate the value of characterising miRNAs – sequences which are involved in post-transcriptional regulation. We are studying the miRNA composition of a set of B. napus cultivars selected to have a diverse range of seed vigor; a quantitative trait characterizing the successful establishment of seedlings. We are using various statistical approaches to explore the correlation between the trait and miRNA expression.