Common bean is a staple food of great economic and social importance and breeding programs are being carried out in different institutions in Brazil and abroad. Aiming to determine how many new cultivars were presented in the journal CBAB - Crop Breeding and Applied Biotechnology and which breeding methods were used to develop the new genotypes, a historical survey of CBAB from 2001 to 2008 was carried out. During this period, 23 new common bean cultivars were described in CBAB, of which all but two that were bred at universities had been developed by public research institutes. The most commonly used breeding method was the pedigree, followed by bulk and the single pod descent (SPD) method. Since the preference of Brazilian consumers for carioca and black grain beans is noticeable, most bean breeders in the country have focused their research on these two bean types.
Phaseolus vulgaris L.; breeding; development of new genotypes
