Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) landrace diversity of North-Western Kashmir Himalayas: Pattern of variation for morphological and yield traits and pod cooking quality

The present study was undertaken to characterize the local landrace diversity of bean. There was a substantial variation among accessions evaluated for all the qualitative traits as depicted by the relative frequency of accessions. Out of 93 accessions, 51 were bush type and 42 were pole type with varying degree of twinning. Pods were predominantly green (79), followed by purple (4), red (2), golden (2) and others (6). Seed colour was predominantly red (53) followed by chocolate and brown (10 each), yellow (8), while as two each were pink, purple, green, black and white with varying degrees of mottling of seed coat. Eighteen accessions were small seeded, 59 were medium and 16 were large seeded. In terms of pod quality, 69 genotypes had strings and 24 were stringless. The range for days to 50% flowering was (32.00–70.00), days to maturity was (71.00–125.00), plant height was (37.33–275.37), the number of pods per plant was (5.78–31.12), pod length was (7.67–26.33), seeds per pod was (2.60–7.56), 100-seed weight was (12.60–59.94) and seed yield per plant was (5.15–46.72). Higher PCV and GCV values were recorded for plant height, pods/plant, seed yield per plant, and 100-seed weight and low for days to flowering, days to maturity, and seeds per pod. High heritability was recorded for all the traits ranging from 76.69% for seed yield per plant to 99.60% for plant height. A significant positive correlation of seed yield with number of pods per plant, 100-seed weight and pod length and while as it was negatively correlated with days to maturity. PCA concentrated the variability in the first four principal components accounting for 78.40% of total variation. The first two PC's explained 51.00% of total variation mainly contributed by number of pods per plant, 100-seed weight and plant height. Out of the ninety three accessions five accessions, WB-1129, WB-206, WB-1006, SFB-1 and Arka Komal were easy to cook and had better pod succulence.