CottonQTLdb, Release 2.3 (January 24, 2018)

Cotton QTL Database: A Resource for Cotton Geneticists and Breeders.

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) produces the most important natural fiber and is commercially cultivated in about 80 countries for the textile industry. Of the approximately 50 Gossypium species, four are cultivated including two tetraploids, i.e., G. hirsutum (AD1, known as Upland cotton) and G. barbadense (AD2, known as Pima, Sea-Island or Egyptian cotton), and two diploids, i.e, G. herbaceum (A1) and G. arboreum (A2). G. hirsutum is known for its high lint yield and wide adaptations and accounts for about 95% of the world cotton production, while G. barbadense is known for its superior fiber length, strength, and fineness and produces 4-5% of the world raw cotton. Since the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics more than a century ago, cotton breeders and geneticists have been attempting to combine the high lint yield of G. hirsutum with the superior fiber quality traits of G. barbadense. For this reason, the majority of quantitative trait locus (QTL) studies in cotton have focused on the two tetraploid species using intraspecific G. hirsutum and interspecific G. hirsutum x G. barbadense populations. This database contains QTL studies in these two types of populations since 1998.

The cotton QTL database (CottonQTLdb) is the product of work done in the Cotton Breeding and Genetics Research Group in cooperation with the Bioinformatics Group at New Mexico State University. We attempt to collect all publicly available QTL data in cotton and continue to update the database annually. CottonQTLdb (Release 1) was launched in January 2015. The current release (Release 2.2) contains 4,268 QTL from 140 publications.

With the accumulation of numerous QTL reported, scientific journals require or recommend that authors compare their QTL identified to these reported in their manuscripts. Currently, researchers can use the cotton QTL database alongside their independent QTL data for comparison purposes without formally submitting the QTL data to the database. The cotton QTL database is also accepting QTL data submissions from independent researchers wishing to add their data to the database.

Update History

Release 2.3 (January 24, 2018)

Release 2.2 (February 01, 2017)

Release 2.1 (May 25, 2016)

Release 2.0 (February 26, 2016)

Release 1.0 (January 25, 2015)

Please cite the following

  1. Said JI, Knapka JA, Song MZ, Zhang JF (2015) Cotton QTLdb: a cotton QTL database for QTL analysis, visualization, and comparison between Gossypium hirsutum and G. hirsutum x G. barbadense populations. Molecular Genetics and Genomics 290(4):1615-1625.
  2. Said JI, Song MZ, Wang H, Lin ZX, Zhang XL, Fang DD, Zhang JF (2015) A comparative Meta- analysis of QTL between intraspecific Gossypium hirsutum and interspecific G. hirsutum x G. barbadense populations. Molecular Genetics and Genomics 290(3):1003-1025.
  3. Said JI, Lin ZX, Zhang XL, Song MZ, Zhang JF (2013) A comprehensive Meta QTL analysis for fiber quality, yield, yield related and morphological traits, drought tolerance, and disease resistance in tetraploid cotton. BMC Genomics 14:776