To compare agronomic and seed traits of 135 common bean landraces originating from Korea, Bulgaria, and El Salvador, we evaluated 20 morphological traits and performed principal component analysis (PCA). In the PCA, the first and second principal components accounted for 55.15% and 15.97% of the total variance, respectively. The first component showed a strong positive correlation with seed size and 100-seed weight, whereas the second component produced a strong negative correlation with days to flowering and days to maturity, indicating that these traits may explain the differences between landraces originating from different countries. Landraces from Korea showed higher variation in days to flowering and days to maturity; those from Bulgaria produced larger and heavier seeds; those from El Salvador produced smaller and lighter seeds and flowering and maturity occurred earlier. In addition, the landraces from El Salvador had relatively lower diversity compared to those from other countries, as they were grouped within a small cluster in the PCA. These evaluation results may provide important information for selecting breeding materials, and diversity analyses of landraces from different countries provide information for securing genetic resources.

This study was conducted to compare the agricultural characteristics of total 444 common bean accessions from Korea (296), China (76), and El Salvador (72). Days to flowering were ranged from 41 to 83 days with an average of 61 days. Days to sowing to maturing were ranged from 86 to 143 days with an average of 104 days. Common beans from El Salvador tend to bloom and mature 3 to 7 days earlier than Korea and China accessions. In growth habit, over 50% of Korea and China accessions were indeterminate and climbing type, but 90.1% from El Salvador were Semi-determinate and climbing type. Qualitative traits were much different among three countries. Eighty-two percentage of immature pod colors were dark pink from El Salvador, but many of those were pale yellow from Korea (77.6%) and China (61.8%). Seed shapes were divided into four types of round, oval, cubic and kidney type, and the highest percentage of those were 30.4% with kidney type. The highest of those was 36.6% with oval type from Korea, 55.3% with kidney type from China and 79.2% with cubic type from El Salvador. Morphological characteristics of common bean from El Salvador were much different from those of Korea and China, which is necessary to collect more germplasm from its native and expand genetic diversity of common beans. Four hundred thirty-five common beans from Korea, China and El Salvador were analyzed using SSR markers. Ninety-two alleles were detected with a lowest of 6 at the BM161, BM181 and a highest of 18 at the BM154, BM160. The average polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.72. To similar with population size among three countries, 292 Korean accessions divided four replications with 73 accessions. As a result genetic diversity was the highest of 0.73 in Chinese populations, while the lowest of 0.48 in El Salvador populations.