RESEARCH ARTICLE Genetic diversity analysis in Phaseolus vulgaris L. using morphological traits Sergey Hegay • Mulatu Geleta • Tomas Bryngelsson • Abdybek Asanaliev • Larisa Garkava-Gustavsson • Helena Persson Hovmalm • Rodomiro Ortiz Received: 13 May 2013 / Accepted: 8 October 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) is an important export crop in Kyrgyzstan since the end of the twentieth century. Genetic diversity analysis of common bean populations is useful for breeding programs, as it helps to select genetic material to be used for further crossing. Twenty-seven common bean accessions were analyzed using 13 qualitative mor- phological traits. In some cases, obtained morpholog- ical data were combined with previously published results based on microsatellite markers. The similarity matrices generated from the molecular and morpho- logical data were significantly correlated (r = 0.49, P \ 0.01). Cluster analyses based on Dice’s similarity coefficient were constructed based on morphological data and the combined data set of morphology and microsatellite, and both grouped the 27 accessions according to their origin: 15 belonged to the Andean and 12 to the Mesoamerican gene pool. On average, the Andean accessions were less diverse than the Mesoamerican accessions. The average diversity based on the Shannon diversity index for the 13 qualitative morphological traits was 0.05. Overall, this study revealed that qualitative morphological markers are efficient in assigning modern cultivars to their gene pools of origin. Keywords Common bean Á Kyrgyzstan Á Mantel test Á Microsatellites Á Phaseolus vulgaris Introduction Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is an annual, self-pollinated crop which is grown on more than 12 million ha in the world. Common bean provides a cheap source of protein in the developing world, especially in Latin America and Africa (CIAT 1989; Graham and Ranalli 1997). The common bean was domesticated independently 8,000 to 10,000 years ago in South America (The Andes) and 7,000 years ago in Meso- america (Kaplan 1981). Bean type classification into two gene pools was made based on morphological traits and phaseolin seed proteins by Gepts et al. (1986) and Gepts (1988), and based on morphological characters and allozymes by Singh et al. (1991c). The two gene pools were further differentiated into races using agro- morphological traits (Singh et al. 1991a) and later confirmed by different types of DNA markers such as random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD; Beebe et al. 2000), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP; Beebe et al. 2001), and microsatellites (SSR; Blair et al. 2003, 2006, 2009; Diaz et al. 2011). S. Hegay (&) Á M. Geleta Á T. Bryngelsson Á L. Garkava-Gustavsson Á H. Persson Hovmalm Á R. Ortiz Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 101, 23053 Alnarp, Sweden e-mail: hegay@inbox.ru S. Hegay Á A. Asanaliev Department of Agronomy, Kyrgyz National Agrarian University, Mederova 68, 720005 Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic 123 Genet Resour Crop Evol DOI 10.1007/s10722-013-0056-3