Morphological Diversity of Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) Germplasm Available at the Research Center for Family Agriculture of Choré, San Pedro, Paraguay

Abstract

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is one of the most consumed legumes in Paraguay, where both its green pods and dry grains can be utilized, thus benefiting the families that produce it through its added value. This work was carried out with the objective of evaluating the genetic diversity among common bean accessions from the germplasm bank of the Research Center for Family Agriculture (CIAF) of the Paraguayan Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPTA) based on morpho-agronomic data. Twenty common bean accessions were characterized; the variables considered were: plant height (cm), root length (cm), pod length (cm), pod diameter (cm), seed length (cm), seed width (cm), number of pods per plant, number of grains per pod, weight of 100 grains (g), pod yield (kg ha⁻¹), grain yield (kg ha⁻¹). Genetic diversity was obtained by dissimilarity measures based on the mean Euclidean distance; for group delimitation, the Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram method and Tocher’s optimization clustering were used. The study of the relative importance of characters in predicting genetic divergence was carried out based on the method proposed by Singh (1981). Groups with greater and lesser distances were formed. Grain yield was the characteristic that contributed most to the genetic distance between accessions. Genetic distances were observed among the accessions that can be explored for a genetic improvement program aimed at obtaining new cultivars with higher production, among other characteristics or selection criteria to address future threats and challenges of the crop.