Four young leaves from different individuals of each variety were planted in Wuhan and were sampled. DNA was extracted using a modified CTAB method27 and then adjusted to 50 ng μl−1. The 60K Brassica Infinium SNP array was employed and the SNP data were analyzed using Illumina BeadStudio (Illumina Inc. San Diego, California, USA).14 (link),20 (link),21 (link) The SNPs with call frequencies > 0.8 or minor allele frequencies (MAF) > 0.05 and homozygous genotype frequency > 0 were selected for association mapping analysis.20 (link) The physical position of the SNPs was identified by aligning the sequence of a 50 bp SNP probe attached to each SNP with the genome sequences of B. napus28 (link) using local BLASTn (BLAST: Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi). If the SNP probe matched two or more locations in the reference genome, the SNPs were regarded as non-specific markers and abandoned.20 (link)