MAPPING AND PREDICTING COLOR RETENTION AND OTHER QUALITY TRAITS IN BLACK BEAN POPULATIONS

摘要

Dry edible beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) provide an economical, nutritious food source for millions of people around the world and are grown in a diverse variety of sizes, colors, shapes, and agronomic traits. In the United States, dry beans are commonly consumed as ready-to-eat canned products, which makes canning quality important to industry standards and consumer preferences. When black beans are processed for canning, they dramatically lose their dark coloration, which results in an undesirable,faded-brown, canned product. Although phenotyping is time and labor-intensive, genotypes with superior color retention have been identified that can enable genetic improvement of this key trait. This research seeks to improve color retention and canningquality via complementary improvements in genotyping and phenotyping, bypassing the current onerous phenotyping procedures. Mapping color retention and canning quality traits to the dry bean genome may allow marker assisted selection, while refining predictive models may be able to efficiently screen dry seed.