U.S. Department of Agriculture: Agricultural Research Service, Lincoln, Nebraska

 

Date of this Version

1975

Citation

Copyright 1975. All rights reserved

Comments

Annual Review of Phytopathology Vol. 13, 1975

Abstract

The inefficacy and cost of many of the chemical bean-disease control measures and the susceptibility of many of the important snap and dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cultivars to damaging diseases stimulated interest in the United States in the development of resistant bean cultivars through breeding. Early epidemics of bean diseases in certain sections of the country and the later discovery of physiological races or strains of many of the causal organisms proved the hopelessness of growing susceptible bean cultivars. None of the American bean cultivars used commercially before 1918 was disease resistant.

The first disease-resistant cultivar, Robust, was developed by F. A. Spragg of the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station in 1915 (117). A white, pea-bean type, it resisted the common bean mosaic virus. The next resistant cuitivar, Great North­ ern University of Idaho (VI) I, developed 'in 1929 by Pierce and Hungerford of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station, was resistant to the same virus and was a selection from the mosaic-susceptible common Great Northern.

Wisconsin Refugee and Idaho Refugee introduced in 1934 were the first mosaic­ resistant snap bean cultivars developed by hybridization (95). These were followed by the release of United States (US) 5 Refugee in 1935 (124). About 35 disease­ resistant dry bean cultivars and 120 snap bean cultivars have been developed in the United States by seed companies, State Experiment Stations, and the US Depart­ment of Agriculture.

The greatest progress in breeding for disease resistance in beans has probably been the development of common mosaic-resistant cultivars of both dry and snap bean types. Unless a newly released cultivar is resistant to the type strain of the virus and to a widespread variant strain, generally known as the New York 15 strain, it is not well accepted by growers, the seed trade, and the bean processing industry.

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