Genetic Divergence in French Bean Accessions

Abstract

Background: Crop improvement has paramount importance to meet the global demand of food to feed the growing human population. Methods: A total of 23 French bean genotypes with diverse genetic background were taken to assess their phenotypic attributes and molecular characterization using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. The data collected during two growing seasons over four locations on different quantitative characters were pooled and analyzed under randomized complete block design for deciphering the extent of genetic diversity. Similarity value, based on Jaccard’s coefficient and UPGMA (un-weighted pair group method with arithmetic mean) analysis was calculated. The dendrogram was constructed using Jaccard’s similarity matrix for above analysis. Result: The genotypes showed a wide variation in morphological characters like plant height, pods per plant, pod weight, pod length and pod yield per plant. The genotype HAFB-5 showed the maximum potential for pod yield per plant and long pods. Four ISSR primers used in this study amplified 27 reproducible bands with 18 (66.66%) polymorphic. The genotype Kashi Param and HAFB-4 were found diverse among the selected genotypes on the basis of molecular markers.