Anton IVANČIČ and Metka ŠIŠKO
pp. 19-25

Interspecific hybridisation within the genus Phaseolus represents an important source of genetic variation which can be very useful in breeding programmes based on recurrent selection. The aim of this investigation was to analyse the phenotypic variation and relationships among the most important quantitative traits in F2 generation materials derived from crosses P. vulgaris x P. coccineus. P. vulgaris was used as female while P. coccineus as male parent. The F2 material was composed of 825 individuals which originated from open pollination of 65 F1 plants. The most variable quantitative trait
was the number of flowers per inflorescence, which varied from 0 to 57 (CV = 45.8 %). The second was the inflorescence length which varied from 2.5 to 74 cm (CV = 39.0 %). The highest value (CV = 70.4 %) was obtained for floral colour (a qualitative trait which was transformed into a special numerical scale). The correlation analysis showed that there were close relationships among the number of leaves, number of flowers, number of pods, number of seeds and the length of the growth period. For practical breeding, the most useful is probably the correlation between the number of inflorescences and the number of seeds per plant (r = 0.503 and 0.560) because the number of inflorescences can be easily determined at the beginning of the hybridisation period, and the number of seeds is more or less directly associated with the yield. For the final visual selection, at the end of the vegetation period, the most useful trait is the number of pods, which is highly correlated with the number of seeds (r = 0.740 and 0.916).
Agricultura 2: 19-25 (2003)

Key words: interspecific hybrids; Phaseolus vulgaris x P. coccineus; hybridisation technique; phenotypic variation; phenotypic correlation coefficients

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