Selection for low soil fertility bean lines tolerant to root rot [CD-ROM]

Common bean is the worlds' most important food legume, accounting for about 57% of the worlds' food legume production (CGIAR, 2001). In Africa, production of the crop is constrained by a number of diseases, of which root rots are among the most important. Recently the root rot problem has increased in Eastern and Central Africa particularly in areas of intensive bean production and low soil fertility (Wortman et al., 1998). The disease is severe in soils deficient in P, N, exchangeable bases and AL and Mn toxicity. Genetic resistance is the most effective control strategy for the disease since it is smallscale farmers with limited resources to purchase external inputs grow the crop. Work has been done to identify sources of resistance to root rots and such sources include RWR 719, SCAM 80CM /15, MLB 49 89A and RWR 432 (Otsyula et al., 1998). However there is still need to identify more sources of resistance especially in the case of variability of the pathogen. And more to this, some of the available sources of resistance are so far not of acceptable seed types by farmers and other end users. Selection for bean lines tolerant to root rots and low soil fertility is a priority for the regional breeding programmes and started recently. This report presents progress in selection of low soil fertility lines possessing levels of root rot tolerance that have been identified in Uganda.