Faba bean (Vicia faba l.) germplasm collection and its diversity in Oman

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is one of the popular pulse crops grown for traditional consumption, not only in Oman but also in Arabian Peninsula and other countries. In Oman, the farmers living in and around high altitude mountain areas mostly grow it. This paper highlights features of variation in seed color and diversity in seed traits found in collected accessions from the joint collecting missions between 2008 and 2011 involving the staff of College of Agriculture, Sultan Qaboos University and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from all the governorates of the Sultanate of Oman. 41 seed samples/accessions were collected from 38 sites. Of these, the highest number of accessions was collected from Batinah South governorate (28) represented mostly by the mountains of Rustaq, followed by the mountains of Interior/Al-Dakhliyah (8), and Dhahira and Buraimi (4). Only one accession was collected from mountains of the Eastern/ Al-Sharqiyah governorates. The seed accessions were found diverse with respect to all seed characters studied, i.e. seed length (cm) and width (cm) and 100-seed weight (g) besides seed color. The faba bean accessions were classified into 9 genetically diverse clusters based on the Principal Component Analysis, which indicated that the contribution of seed width and 100-seed weight to the total variation existing in indigenous germplasm collected from all the governorates of Oman. It was found from the critical analysis of seed colors that 38 accessions were homogenous (pure) with one color and three were heterogeneous with combinations of colors.