Grain quality of Yugoslav beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)

The convergence of important trading routes and the arrival of beans from two directions, east (Turkey) and west (France, Italy), resulted in the development of two approaches in treating the bean as a food item. Consequently, domestic bean breeding programs differ in objectives with respect to grain color, shape and taste. The paper presents a quality comparison between 11 domestic and five foreign bean varieties. The studied quality parameters were grain color and shape, grain size determined as 1000-grain mass, and chemical properties of the grain. Six varieties had colored grains, 10 had white ones. The range of grain shapes covered seven of the 13 recognized shapes. Regarding 1000-grain mass, the domestic varieties were in the group of medium late varieties with the mass ranging from 250 to 450 g. Protein content in grains ranged from 22% to 25%. The varieties differed in the contents of starch, cellulose, fat and minerals in the grain. The hierarchical cluster method of the multivariate analysis was used to classify the tested genotypes according to the. chemical composition of the grain and according to all quality parameters studied.