Diversidade genética de acessos de feijão crioulo na região Noroeste do Rio Grande do Sul

Beans represent 50% of the volume of grain consumed in the world and this is the main source of protein used in human consumption in several countries in Latin America, East Africa and South Africa. The present study was conducted to estimate the genetic diversity of nine bean accessions (eight accessions and one commercial cultivar) by morphological characterization under field conditions in the northwest region of Rio Grande do Sul. Thirteen morphological characters of plants and seeds were evaluated. The accessions of creole beans showed little significant divergence, except for the Red accession that stood out as the one with the highest genetic divergence from the evaluated characters. The variables that most contributed to the separation of accessions were weight of one thousand seeds, seed width and length and number of days from emergence to flowering. The characters related to seed morphology have a higher relative contribution in the formation of the groups. The physiological maturation is not a good indicator of the genetic distance between bean accessions for the conduction conditions of the experiment.