Genetic diversity of the autochtonous Phaseolus bean germplasm originating from five South east European countries

Genetic differentiation of 167 Phaseolus vulgaris L. accessions originating from five South east European countries was performed using 13 SSR markers. Analysis included 21 accessions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 15 accessions from Croatia, 73 accessions from Macedonia, 38 accessions from Serbia and 20 accessions from Slovenia. Calculated mean number of alleles per locus was 9.8. The average polymorphic information content over all loci reached value of 0.710 where the most informative locus was GATS91 (0.926). These results showed that selected set of SSR markers are highly informative and applicable for studies of genetic diversity within germplasm collected in the five South east European countries, which was also confirmed with the calculated value of probability of identity (1.831x10). High mean value of expected heterozygosity (0.731) and Shannon’s information index (1.486) reflects high genetic diversity within accessions from five countries, where accessions from Macedonia are genetically the most uniform, due to 17completely identical accessions included