common bean, landraces, morphological characterization
Abstract
There is a long tradition in the cultivation of pulses in the Balkans and the Iberic Peninsula, mainly used for human consumption. Among the major food legumes common bean is the most important. A large range of landraces are still grown that have adaptation to local climatic conditions and resistance or tolerance to diseases and pests allowing high yield stability under a low input farming. The main purpose of this work was to analyze the morphological variability of 15 Portuguese and 15 Bulgarian landraces in different environmental conditions (in Bulgaria and Portugal) in order to generate information that can help identifying the most suitable resources with good adaptability to different environments. The landraces were evaluated for 16 morphological characters. A considerable morphological variation was found among genotypes. The majority of landraces had white seeds colour but some had also cream, purple and white with red colours around the hillum. The predominant seed shape was long but three accessions have round shape. The geographical site of the trials (Elvas, Portugal or Sadovo, Bulgaria) determined the cluster pattern of the majority of accessions. In Portugal, the plants required more days to reach the flowering and maturity phases and had higher biological yield. In both environments, the components that mainly determined yield were the number of pods and the number of seeds per plant. The highest value for these traits were found in one Portuguese accession (cat.? PH2) and one Bulgarian accession (cat.? 99E0128), in both experimental conditions.
