CENTERS OF DOMESTICATION FOR CHINESE, SPANISH, AND BEANCAP SNAP BEAN POPULATIONS

INTRODUCTION: Snap beans were primarily developed in Europe after the Columbian Exchange through selection for low fiber pods, thicker pod walls, and pod stringlessness (Myers & Baggett, 1999). Abundant evidence supports separate domestications of dry beans in the Andean and Mesoamerican centers, and the best available evidence suggests that snap beans were derived from dry bean from both centers, although the majority descend from the Andean gene pool (Gepts, 1998). While most snap beans were developed in Europe, they are not exclusively found there. Snap beans may have also been developed in China, and there is evidence that at least one bean with low fiber pod traits may have been developed by Native Americans, viz. ‘Trail of Tears.’ Three unique bean populations from China, Spain, and North America have the potential to shed light on the broader development of snap beans and their dissemination pathways out of the Americas using modern molecular tools. The first of these populations is an uncatalogued collection of Chinese snap beans assembled from a trip in 1991 by Michael Dickson (Cornell Univ.) consisting of 58 genotypes. The second consists of a selection of 11 Spanish genotypes from the Misión Biológica de Galicia – CSIC (Pontevedra, Spain) collection. These are a subset of lines selected from this collection that possess edible pod traits (de Ron, personal communication). The last population, the BeanCAP diversity panels, consists 149 snap beans mostly from commercial bean lines in North America and Europe