Association of Seed Color with Emergence and Seed Yield of Snap Beans1

Field tests involving 47 pairs of snap bean breeding lines, near-isogenic except for differences in seed color, demonstrated that colored-seeded sub-lines were superior to their white-seeded counterparts in emergence and seedling vigor. In 11 yield comparisons between colored- and white-seeded isogenic sub-lines, the colored-seeded sub-lines outyielded their white-seeded counterparts by an average of 67%. Covariance techniques were used to adjust yields to remove stand effects. The results suggested that differences in stand based on seed color was a major factor affecting yield.