Biparental recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations are sets of genetically stable lines and have a simple population structure that facilitates the dissection of the genetics of interesting traits. On the other hand, populations derived from multiparent intercrosses combine both greater diversity and higher numbers of recombination events than RILs. Here, we describe a simple population structure: a three-way recombinant inbred population combination. This structure was easy to produce and was a compromise between biparental and multiparent populations. We show that this structure had advantages when analyzing cultivar crosses, and could achieve a mapping resolution of a few genes.
