New sources of earliness for Finnish faba bean breeding

Crop yields in Finland are limited by many factors, such as the short growing season and spring drought. Thus earliness is an important breeding goal in Finnish agriculture, and is especially needed in some crops such as faba bean that have a longer growing period than cereals. During 2009-2011, 400 accessions of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) from 34 countries were evaluated for morphophysiological traits related to drought resistance and the earliest accessions were identified. The four earliest accessions, from Cyprus and Syria, were sown in a pot experiment, together with Kontu and Witkiem Manita (an early-flowering, large-seeded Dutch cultivar) in order to determine days to flowering, podding and maturity under controlled conditions. The experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with 3 replicates. There were highly significant differences for all studied traits (p<0.001). Accessions D497, D557 and D505 had significantly faster progress to flowering and
podding compared to Kontu. Accession D497 was the earliest genotype with 947 GDD (Growing degree-days to maturity), followed by accession D557 (985 GDD), and Kontu and Witkiem Manita were latest accessions in this study (1165 and 1159 GDD, respectively). The linkage of early flowering and early maturity to large seed size needs to be tested. These accessions may be valuable sources of earliness that could be used in faba bean breeding for short seasons such as those in Finland.