MORPHOLOGICAL, PHENOLOGICAL AND AGRONOMICAL CHARACTERISATION OF VARIABILITY AMONG COMMON BEAN (PHASEOLUS VULGARIS L.) LOCAL POPULATIONS FROM THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES: POLISH GENEBANK

ABSTRACT The main purpose of this work was to analyse the morphological, phenological and agronomical variability among common bean local populations from The National Centre for Plant Genetic Resources, Polish Genebank, in order to know the relation among them, and to identify potentially useful accessions for future production and breeding. A considerable genotypic variation for number of seeds per plant, number of pods per plant and weight of seeds per plant were found. Studied bean accessions differed significantly in terms of thousand seeds weight (TSW) as well as severity of bacterial halo blight and anthracnose, the major bean diseases. The lowest genotypic diversity was found for the percentage of protein in the seeds, the length of the vegetation period and lodging. The cluster analysis allowed identification of five groups of bean accessions. Genotypes from the first cluster KOS 002 and Raba cv.) and from the second cluster (WUKR 06-573a, KRA 4, WUKR 06-0534 together with Prosna cv.) are of the highest usefulness for breeding purposes. There was no grouping of local populations depending on region of origin