*4.7. Association Analysis*

Association analysis for *ZmTCPs* was performed by using a maize association mapping population containing 367 inbred lines and the corresponding drought tolerance phenotype data from a previous study [45]. Among the 556,945 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, with minor allele frequency (MAF)≥ 0.05, 317 SNPs were found in the genic region of the 46 *ZmTCPs*. The general linear model (GLM) model, the GLM model with the first 2 principal components (PC2), and the mixed linear model (MLM) model were chosen to detect the SNPs significantly associated with drought tolerance, by using the TASSEL5.0 program [62].
