Collection and phenotypic characterisation of pole-type common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) landraces from Mizoram

Abstract

Common beans are one of the many important food legumes grown in India. In the hilly regions of northeastern India farmers mostly grow the pole-type beans by intercropping beans with maize, and in backyards and kitchen gardens. In this study, we characterized a set of 52 pole-type common bean landraces collected from the state of Mizoram for 23 agro-morphological and quality traits. Remarkable variability was observed for almost all the traits. Wide range of variability was found for the traits such as leaf length (7.5-18.0 cm), leaf breadth (6.2-12.8 cm) days to flowering (33-70 days), pods per plant (7.7-24.0), pod length (8.1-14.6 cm), pod yield per plant (61.5-182.3 g), seeds per pod (4.6-8.0), 100-seed weight (23.0-50.1 g) and crude protein content (20-33.8%). Positively significant correlation coefficients were observed between 100-seed weight and days to flowering; number of pods per plant and pod yield per plant. The patterns of morphological variation were assessed using multivariate approaches. Five morphologically distinct clusters were identified within the collected germplasm. The evolutionary grouping of the common bean landraces has been discussed considering the morphological features.