Conservation and characterization of native Phaseolus vulgaris germplasm from Northwestern Argentina

Abstract

The Active Germplasm Bank from Northwestern Argentina (BANOA), situated at the Salta Experimental Station of the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA-EEA-Salta), conserves an important common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) collection of native wild populations and landraces. The BANOA bean collection, which was started in the 80s, consists of 700 accessions, including 400 landraces and 300 wild populations, collected in different regions of Northwestern Argentina. Germplasm collections must provide to breeders genetic variants, genes or genotypes, in order to respond to the challenges demanded by the new production systems. This requires the study and characterization of the preserved germplasm (Abadie and Berreta, 2001; Singh, 2001; De Ron et al, 2015). The aim of this work is to present the preliminary results of the evaluation of part of the BANOA bean collection based on morpho-agronomic characters, microsatellite markers and DNA sequences associated with domestication genes.