Paul Gibson, Int'l Inst. Cooperative Studies, Cooperative Studies Inc., PO Box 12830, Overland Park, KS 66282-2830, John C. Sanford, Horticultural Sciences, Cornell University, Geneva, NY 14456, John Baumgardner, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, Wes Brewer, Computer Science & Electronic Engineering, Handong Global University, Pohang, South Korea, and Walter ReMine, Science & Mathematics Dept., Northwestern College, St. Paul, MN 55113.
Mendel's Accountant is a user-friendly, forward-time population genetics simulator that examines the accumulating effects on fitness of deleterious and beneficial mutations in diploids under the influence of selection, drift, and several other factors (see abstract for “Introducing Mendel's Accountant…” in section A1). Of special interest in applied plant breeding is the opportunity to specify the number of initial contrasting alleles, each having a frequency of 0.5. The fate of these alleles can be studied as influenced by various factors, including population size, environmental noise, differing types of selection (truncation, probability, broken-line) and selection intensities (0 to 99% elimination). The boundary between selectable and non-selectable effects (Kimura’s box) is strongly influenced by these and other factors. Partial or complete isolation of subpopulations can be specified for any number of generations, followed by full mixing of subpopulations, allowing exploration of the mechanisms of heterosis. While other forward-time population genetics simulators exist, Mendel's Accountant excels in ease of use, graphic output, biological realism and applicability to plant breeding problems. The program is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mendelsaccount and is free of charge. It has only recently been made publicly available, and we welcome suggestions for improvements and reports of experiences with its use in a teaching or research context.
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