Snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): advances in genetic improvement

Singh BK, Lal H, Ranjan JK and Singh B. 2016. Snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.): advances in genetic improvement. In: National Symposium on Vegetable Legumes for Soil and Human Health (Singh B, Singh M, Rai AB, Singh PM, Prasad RN, Mishra GP, Singh BK, Ranjan JK, Devi J, Seth T, Nagendran K., Chaukhande P, Kumar R, Gautam KK, Gujjar RS and Kumar YB Eds). ICAR-IIVR, Varanasi, 12-14 February 2016, pp 125-136.

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), an important legume, is a rich source of protein, vitamins, minerals and fibre. The main categories of common beans, on the basis of uses, are dry beans (seeds harvested at complete maturity), snap beans (tender pods with reduced fibre harvested before the seed development phase) and shell beans (seeds harvested at physiological maturity) and. Snap bean is also known as French bean, garden bean, green bean, edible podded bean, string bean, fresh bean or vegetable bean. As the name implies, snap beans break easily when the pod is bent, giving off a distinct audible snap sound. The pods of snap beans (green, yellow and purple in colour) are harvested when they are rapidly growing, fleshy, tender (not tough and stringy), bright in colour, and the seeds are small and underdeveloped (8 to 10 days after flowering). After that period, excessive seed development reduces quality and the pod becomes fibrous, pithy and tough, and loses its bright colour. Snap bean seeds may also be used in dry static like the dry bean types. In that case pinto, kidney, pink, small red, etc. terms are used. In India, the dry bean type varieties are known as rajmash/rajmah, and snap bean named as rajmah phali in Hindi. Common beans display a wide range of growth habits from bush determinate to pole indeterminate types. Bush types are the most widely grown and are a relatively short duration crop; but on the other hand, in smallholder agriculture or in kitchen garden where land is scarce, labour-intensive high-yielding climbing beans getting popularity now-a-days. Dry bean is the largest pulse crop in the world with 23.60 mt of annual production grown on 29.29 mha area; and the top ten producing countries are Mayanmar (3.90 mt), India (3.63 mt), Brazil (2.79 mt), China (1.46 mt), USA (1.45 mt), Tanzania (1.20 mt), Mexico (1.08 mt), Kenya (0.61 mt), Ethiopia (0.46 mt) and Rawanda (0.43 mt). Moreover, snap beans’ global annual production and area is about 20.74 mt and 1.54 mha, respectively with maximum production in China (16.20 mt) followed by Indonesia (0.87 mt), India (0.62 mt), Turkey (0.61 mt), Thailand (0.31 mt), Egypt (0.25 mt), Spain (0.17 mt), Italy (0.14 mt), Morocco (0.13 mt) and Bangladesh (0.09 mt) [FAOSTAT 2012]. In India, it is grown on an area of about 1 lakh ha mainly in the states of Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, North-East hills, Nilgiri (Tamil Nadu), hills of central India, Palni hills (Kerala) Chickmagalur (Karnataka) and Darjeeling hills (West Bengal). The tender pods of snap bean are good source of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), phylloquinone (vitamin K), β-carotene (vitamin A), riboflavin (vitamin B2), niacin (vitamin B3), Mn, K, Ca, P, Fe and omega-3 fatty acid. It is a legume crop, do fix some nitrogen but the N fixing bacteria are not active as with other legumes; therefore there is need to fertilize the field with nitrogenous fertilizer to harness the yield potential.

Origin and Domestication

The genus Phaseolus is originated in the American continent and a large number of its species is found in Mesoamerica (Freytag and Debouck 2002; Acosta-Gallegos et al. 2007). Moreover, common bean has originated in southern Mexico to Central America (Mesoamerica), while Ecuador-Peru-Bolivia region is the secondary centre of origin (Gepts 1998; Bellucci et al. 2014). The hypothesis of Mesoamerican origin of the common bean is supported by the observations that the closest relatives of wild P. vulgaris are distributed throughout Mesoamerica (Schmit et al. 1993; Delgado-Salinas et al. 2006). The genus Phaseolus comprised of about 70 species and has contributed to human welfare with five cultigens domesticated in pre-Columbian times: common bean (P. vulgaris L.), year bean (P. dumosus Macfad.), runner bean (P. coccineus L.), tepary bean (P. acutifolius A Gray) and lima bean (P. lunatus L.). Among the five domesticated species, P. vulgaris is the most important economically that accounts for more than 90% of the cultivated Phaseolus worldwide (Singh 2001; Acosta-Gallegos et al. 2007). The current distribution of the wild common bean encompasses a large geographical area: from northern Mexico to north-western Argentina. Prior to domestication, wild P. vulgaris had diverged into two major gene pools on the basis of geographic distribution: (i) the Mesoamerican i.e. Middle America and (ii) the Andean i.e. Andean South America which can be distinguished at the morphological, biochemical and molecular levels (Singh et al. 1991a), and also display partial reproductive isolation caused by F₁ lethality (Gepts and Bliss 1985). With the exceptions, no successful recombination has occurred between the two major gene pools. A first exception is provided by Chilean landraces which showed signs of introgession from the Mesoamerican gene pool based on phaseolin seed protein and allozymes (Paredes and Gepts 1995). The second exception is evolution of snap bean cultivars. Although they originated in the Andean gene pool, many varieties are actually intermediate between the two gene pools as evidenced by RAPD markers (Skroch and Nienhuis 1995). This intermediate position may be attributed to recent breeding efforts aimed at introducing disease resistance from the Mesoamerican gene pool into the snap bean cultivars (Gepts 1998). While only these two major gene pools are recognized in the domesticated population, the geographical structure of the wild form of the common bean is more complex, with an additional third gene pool that is localized between Peru and Ecuador, and characterized by a specific storage seed protein, phaseolin type I (Debouck et al. 1993; Kami et al. 1995). Generally, the Mesoamerican gene pool possesses higher content of lectin, Ca, P, S and Zn than the Andean gene pool but lower phaseolin and Fe (Islam et al. 2002). Further, the two major gene pools in P. vulgaris have been divided into six races (Mesoamerican gene pool: Mesoamerica, Durango and Jalisco; and Andean gene pool: Nueva Granada, Peru and Chile) as the members of each race share distinct morphological, agronomic, physiological and biochemical traits; and differ from other races in allelic frequencies of genes controlling these traits (Singh et al. 1991a).

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