Characterization of pinto and cranberry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) landraces from western Himalayan Kashmir for yield and quality

Abstract

The present study aimed to characterize pinto and cranberry bean landraces of Kashmir valley. A set of 30 genotypes including 16 pinto and 12 cranberry type bean landraces and two checks viz., Shalimar Rajmash-1 (SR-1) and Shalimar French Bean-1 (SFB-1) were evaluated for seven qualitative and 10 quantitative traits.  There was a substantial variation among 30 accessions (28 landraces and 2 checks) evaluated for all the traits.  Out of 28 landrace accessions, 13 were bushy type and 15 were pole type.  Pods were predominantly green and seed colour was predominantly brown with characteristic mottling of varying colour shades.  Out of 30 accessions, 16 were medium sized with oval seeds. There was substantial variability as depicted by a wide range for both morphological and seed quality traits pertaining to water absorption as well as protein content and phytic acid. The heat map revealed that seed yield had a significant correlation with the number of pods per plant (0.505), followed by seed length (0.455) and seeds per pod (0.414). Similarly, water absorption percentage was significantly correlated with hydration coefficient followed by seed wet weight and hydration capacity but was negatively correlated with hard shell percentage and coat proportion. Principal component analysis based on the seed yield and related traits concentrated the variability in the first three components for morphological traits and four components for seed quality traits explaining 67.23 % and 78.60 % variation, respectively.  A number of desirable genotypes could be identified based on consistent performance for various maturity, yield and seed quality traits including high protein and low phytic acid content. Keywords: Common bean, Western Himalayas, Pinto beans, Cranberry beans, Cooking quality, Seed protein, Phytic acid