2010 Annual Report 1a.Objectives (from AD-416) To develop and apply marker assisted selection to genetics and plant breeding in cotton. 1b.Approach (from AD-416) Skills, knowledge, ability, and experience in developing and using DNA markers in genetics and plant breeding will be used to utilize molecular genetics knowledge in cotton genetics and plant breeding research. Research will involve finding markers associated with important traits in cotton and utilization of these markers to improve approaches to breeding new and useful traits into cotton. 3.Progress Report Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) marker analysis can be used to locate and tag important quantitative trait loci (QTL) for marker assisted selection. We associated several simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers with QTL for resistance to two species of nematodes. This project was monitored by daily contact with the cooperator in the ARS facility.