Grain yield and quality are the main economically important traits in breeding of field pea (Pisum sativum L.). The objective of our work was investigating trait-marker associations in elite pea germplasm, with the final aim to develop marker-assisted selection procedures for these traits. The genetic base for this study was represented by three connected recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations obtained from paired crosses between three genotypes (the varieties Attika, Isard and Kaspa) which featured different geographical origin and outstanding adaptation to Italian cropping environments. At least 86 F7 lines per RIL generated by single-seed descent were evaluated for grain yield, plant height, lodging resistance and grain protein content in a springsown field experiment in Lodi. The same material was genotyped by 384 SNP markers. Values for protein content, estimated by NIRS, showed range values at least as large as 6% in each RIL population. SNP genotyping helped in building a genetic consensus map and detecting QTLs related to all phenotypic traits. Further work is on-going for enlarging both the evaluation environments for phenotyping and the set of SNP markers for map saturation.