Resistance to Fusarium wilt in common bean

In breeding programs, understanding the potential of parents should be a way to spend significantly less time and costs to obtain new cultivars. For this, the objective of this study was to estimate the general and specific combining ability of parents aiming common bean breeding for resistance to Fusarium wilt (FW) based on disease severity and reduction in plant growth. Eight common bean genotypes were crossed in a 3 x 5 partial diallel mating scheme to obtain F1 hybrids. The parents and their 15 F1 hybrids were evaluated for severity of Fusarium wilt, area under the disease progress curve, percentage of plant height reduction and plant shoot fresh weight reduction and grain yield. The resistance of common bean to FW is controlled by a few dominant genes. The reduction in plant growth is controlled by a different set of genes that can increase the selection efficiency of parents for common bean breeding.