Linear models in biology : joint studies in quantitative genetics

This presentation has the purpose of recalling the more than 30 years of fruitful cooperation with Tadeusz Cali´nski, first, and then also with the group of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Zygmunt Kaczmarek and Pawe l Krajewski, which supported our work with their statistical expertise, giving value to the data we produced and rigorous shape to the biological model we studied. I’ll give a general view of the researches we performed, applying proper statistical methods, for the study of fitness components in higher plants. A first field of cooperation was statistical approaches for the genetic analysis of complex traits, such as plant fertility. A second research area is linkage analysis with molecular markers, for the detection of quantitative trait loci, which, since the 90’s appeared to be a powerful tool for dissecting quantitative traits into Mendelian factors. Novel methods has been developed and applied to detect the genetic architecture underlying plant adaptability to environmental stresses