Identification of Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) Germplasm Resources in Hubei Province and Evaluation on Their Main Agronomic Traits

According to Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era, Jian Zhang was dispatched to the Western Region in the Western Han Dynasty, he obtained faba bean seeds there and then returned to his homeland, thereby the variety was introduced to China, which has been more than 2 000 years of history up to now112I. Analytical methods All statistical data were the mean of field characters of the planting area of each material, the statistical analyses on the agronomic traits including growth period, plant height, effective branching number per plant, pods per plant, beans per pod, 100-bean weight and yield per plant, and the mean, standard deviation and variable coefficient[7_81 of quality characters including crude protein, total starch and amylose were carried out using Excel (Microsoft office, 2003). Based on the analysis of the variation degree of each quality character, we can draw a conclusion that the variable coefficients of crude protein, total starch and amylose were 5.8%, 5.3% and 10.4%, respectively. [...]the content of amylose had higher degree of variation in these quality characters of all germplasms. The faba bean germplasms of Hubei were sensitive to bean aphid, there were 141 faba bean germplasms having high sensibility to aphid, which accounted for 88.1% of the identified germplasms. [...]the resistance to diseases and pests of faba bean germplasms in Hubei Province was poor, which should be paid attention to by breeding workers in breeding new faba bean varieties in Hubei.