an evaluation of the diversity in morphological traits and an identification of the relationships among these traits of white common bean collected in national plant gene bank of iran

in order to study the genetic diversity as well as the relationships between seed yield and some morphological traits in common white bean, 500 accessions were evaluated in the experimental field of national plant gene bank of iran in 2004 in an augment design of three control varieties. traits were evaluated according to the instruction of ipgri. results of descriptive statistics indicated that number of seeds per plant, seed yield per plant, number of pods per plant, plant height, number of nodes in the main stem, seed shape and growth type vaied considerably. the results of simple correlation, multiple regression and path analysis indicated that the number of pods per plant, 100 seed weight and number of seeds per plant had the greatest effect on seed yield per plant, and therefore were introduced as yield components. in principal component analysis, 6 principal components explained approximately 82.5 percent of the total variance.