Mahima Gotame^1*, Santosh BK² and Abhisek Shrestha^3
1Mahendra Ratna Multiple Campus, Department of Horticulture, Ilam, Nepal
²Agriculture Knowledge Center, Sankhuwasabha, Nepal
³College of Natural Resource Management, Bardibas, Nepal
*Corresponding author’s email: mahimagotame40@gmail.com

Abstract

French bean has been a nutritiously and economically important legume crop and has a diversity ranging from Terai to High Hills of Nepal. Diversity studies should be done for crop improvement and for their genetic conservation for breeding purpose to adapt them in concurrent climate change. This paper focused on studying the agro morphological diversity of the French bean landraces available in Sankhuwasabha district. Eleven landraces were collected and tested during the month of March to July 2022. The experiment was carried out in randomized complete block design and replicated three times. The size of the plot was maintained 4.6m2 with spacing of 75cm×30cm and data was recorded on 15 quantitative and 8 qualitative characteristics. The result revealed that significant differences were observed among the genotypes for all quantitative traits and qualitative characteristics except stem diameter. The variation on germination % (98.67-82.67), plant height (210.8-22.5cm), number of pods/plant (82-90), pod weight/plot (68.2-17.64 gm) and 100 seed weight (40.47-13.6gm) were observed. The tested landraces took 38-41 days for flowering and first picking matured at 63-78 days and consequently 1-4 harvesting was done. The three major principle components were formed with Eigen value >1 with cumulative diversity of 78.1%. The result showed great variation in pod weight among the genotypes. Genotypes were clustered in and three groups on all quantitative traits showed a similarity level of 26.95-72.8%. Among the tested landraces, Rato bhatte and soste simi showed prominent quantitative characters in terms of pod number, plant height and test weight. This study is useful for promoting the landraces and uses their genetic traits for further improvement in the breeding purpose of French bean.