Characterization of Some Turkish Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) Genotypes for Agro-morphological Traits

Faba bean is good resource of protein, starch, cellulose and minerals. Therefore it will have an increasing importance for human and animal food in the future, to meet the needs of the growing population. To choose the appropriate accessions and employ them in the breeding program, the current study's objectives were to evaluate the variety of agronomic traits in Turkish faba bean germplasm and to discover genomic areas linked to the assayed attributes. The field experiments were carried out in the Turkish province of Sivas using a total of 330 faba bean genotypes and 3 registred cultivars as plant material according to augmented block design. There were 8 agronomic traits in total. The analysis of variance reveals that, with the exception of germination days, the factor of variety had a large and significant impact on the majority of morphological features (p<0.01). Furthermore the results showed a wide range in the following traits: flowering days (26 -39 days), plant height (25-59 cm), first pod height (10.50-42,60 cm), the number of pod per (1-33), the number of seeds per plant (2.40-106), grain weight per plant (1.80-224.9 g), the 100 grain weight (48-214 g), while a narrow range is noticed for days of germination (23-29 g). Correlation analysis showed that plant height, grain weight and the number of pods and seeds per plant are positively collerated wich other. Also it was a strong and extremely significant association between the number of seeds per plant, the weight of grain per plant, and the number of pods per plant, as well as a positive and large correlation between the number of seeds and grain weight per plant. According to PCA of the defined agro-morphological variables, 5 principal components comprising 33.975, 15.137, 13.023, 12.626 and 10.246%, respectively can explain 87.007 % of the total variation.