| heal.abstract |
Using data from four environments of a two-year experiment, a collection of 55 Greek faba bean populations was characterized on the basis of ten morphological and ten agronomical traits. The collection can be described as having flowers with medium intensity of streaks on standard petal, two to three flowers per inflorescence, leaves with six leaflets per leaf, sub-elliptic leaflet shape and small or medium leaflet size. The stems had weak or medium pigmentation at flowering time, were of low or medium thickness, had medium height and medium branching from basal nodes and high resistance to lodging. Pods were mainly basal with pendent attitude, flattened in shape, had dark colour at maturity and were small with few ovules and seeds. Most seeds had testa of light green colour. This characterization makes the present collection similar to other South European faba bean populations. Apart from characterization, collections should also be evaluated from the breeding point of view. Since the most desirable populations within a collection are those with valuable but 'low frequency' levels of traits, the parameter R ('rareness') was proposed. For each trait, a 'partial rareness' (Ri) parameter is calculated using only those trait levels that can be considered as having 'low frequency'. The parameter R is the sum of the 'partial rarenesses'. Populations with high frequencies of the 'lowest frequency' levels of traits in the collection are characterized by high values of R and can, therefore, be more easily identified. |
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