Genetic divergence in French bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) pole type cultivars.

Thirty three genotypes of pole type french beans obtained from India and abroad were evaluated during Kharif, 2006 in Solan, Himachal Pradesh with the objective to genetically evaluate these genotypes for important horticultural traits and to workout the genetic divergence in the genotypes for further breeding studies. Significant differences were observed for all the characters studied. The material was subjected to genetic analysis and further, based on Mahalanobis D2 statistics, genotypes were grouped into six clusters, majority of which were accommodated in cluster I, followed by cluster VI. Maximum intra cluster distance was in cluster V followed by cluster I and the inter cluster distance was observed maximum between cluster IV and V followed by cluster I and VI. Cluster mean for different characters revealed that cluster V was the best of all from snap bean point of view and should be exploited in breeding programme. Further, hybridization between cluster IV and V could be utilized for getting the superior recombinants or transgress segregants in segregating generations.