establishment of a core collection of bean ( phaseolus vulgaris l.) germplasm in the national plant gene bank of iran

common bean (phaseolus vulgaris l.) is one of the most important food legumes worldwide. the development of a core collection could facilitate easier access to bean genetic resources and enhance their applications in crop improvement program. in this article development of a core collection from 1425 accessions of common bean germplasm available from the national plant gene bank of iran (npggbi) was described. accessions were clustered by ward`s method based on geographical origin and 17 qualitative morphological traits data. some accessions randomly selected from each cluster according to origin of construct core collection. mean comparisons using mann-whitney u test, variances comparison by leven's test and comparison of frequency distribution by x2 test indicated that core collection was similar to whole collection. the shannon-weaver diversity index (h (were also confirmed the similarity of collection and core collection based on different traits.