The key difference between genetic linkage and linkage disequilibrium is that genetic linkage is the tendency of two or more genes of the same chromosome to remain together in the process of inheritance while linkage disequilibrium is the non-random association of alleles at different loci in a population.
Genetic linkage and linkage disequilibrium are two concepts in genetics that follow non-Mendelian inheritance. Genetic linkage refers to the physical state of being linked in a chromosome. In simple words, it is the process in which genes are closely located in a chromosome so that they are always inherited together into gametes. On the other hand, in population genetics, linkage disequilibrium refers to the non-random association of alleles at different loci in a population. It is the measure of the difference between the observed frequency of a particular combination of alleles at two loci and the frequency expected for the random association.
