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Plant Science Today (PST)

Research Articles

Vol. 13 No. sp2 (2026): Recent Advances in Agriculture

Morphological and molecular characterisation of broad bean (Vicia faba L.) genotypes for assessing diversity in yield and associated traits

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.12542
Submitted
1 November 2025
Published
20-06-2026

Abstract

Broad beans are one of the most important but neglected vegetable crops with excellent nutritional properties. The potential of broad beans can be utilised by developing improved cultivars with higher yields. There is a need to explore the available genetic diversity of broad beans and utilise them in improvement programs to promote their widespread adoption. The current study included 22 genotypes of broad bean along with 2 checks. Morphological diversity was assessed through the evaluation of 16 quantitative variables and 8 qualitative descriptors. The analysis revealed a wide range of genetic variability among the 22 genotypes. For molecular characterisation, 18 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were used to study the diversity among the tested genotypes. Two genotypes (RPCAU/BB/2023/11 and RPCAU/BB/2023/13) were found to be significantly superior to the checks for fresh pod yield per plant and its associated traits. The highest polymorphic information content (PIC) was recorded in M16 and M25 (0.84), while the lowest PIC was seen in M17 (0.24). A total of 82 alleles were obtained, of which 72 were shared alleles and 10 were unique alleles. The dendrogram formed 2 clusters, each containing 12 genotypes, which were further divided into 2 sub-clusters. The 22 genotypes showed high variability and can be further utilised in breeding programmes.

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