“…Association mapping (AM) based on linkage disequilibrium (LD) has been frequently used to search for more than two alleles at a gene locus or additional gene loci and explore the natural genomic diversity at a population level (Zhu et al, 2008 ; Brachi et al, 2011 ; Weigel, 2012 ). AM has been widely applied to exploit favorable marker alleles in rice for many traits, including yield traits (Garris et al, 2005 ; Agrama et al, 2007 ; Huang et al, 2010 , 2011 ; Zhao et al, 2011 ; Li et al, 2012 ; Vanniarajan et al, 2012 ; Dang et al, 2015 ; Yang et al, 2015 ; McCouch et al, 2016 ), quality traits (Borba et al, 2010 ; Huang et al, 2010 ; Jin et al, 2010 ; Feng et al, 2016 ), resistance traits (Famoso et al, 2011 ; Jia et al, 2012 , 2016 ; Cui et al, 2013 , seed vigor traits Cui et al, 2013 ; Dang et al, 2014 ; Rebolledo et al, 2015 ; Phung et al, 2016 ), and outcrossing traits (Yan et al, 2009 ; Huang et al, 2010 ; Dang et al, 2016 ). Although several studies on associations between markers and the PEL trait in rice have been reported (Begum et al, 2015 ; Crowell et al, 2016 ), no significant association has been detected between PEL and molecular markers.…”