Association analysis, also known as LD mapping or association mapping, is a population-based survey used to identify trait-marker relationships based on LD. Unlike linkage analysis, where familial relationships are used to predict corre- lations between phenotype and genotype, association methods rely on previous, unrecorded sources of disequilibrium to create population-wide marker-phenotype associations (22). Genetic diversity is evaluated across natural populations to iden- tify polymorphisms that correlate with phenotypic variation.