The cultivation of the special-grain bean is still limited in Brazil. The objectives here therefore, were: i) to evaluate the effects of the interaction of line and environment on the characteristics that control the agronomic performance and cooking time in special-grain beans lines, and ii) to identify those lines having a high agronomic performance and reduced cooking time. To do this, 29 special-grain beans lines were evaluated for different locations, years and growing seasons. Significant interaction of line and environment was observed for all the traits evaluated. The Light Red Kidney, Red Kanner, Montcalm, Chinock and BRS Radiante lines showed a similar grain yield for the four environments. The tested lines have a semi-early or early cycle and desirable morphological characteristics. The following values for the clarity of the grain tegument were obtained for white beans (72.85 to 82.25), cranberry (33.06 to 62.57), red (24.51 to 43.69), green (57.01 to 62.36) and pink (49.95 to 55.60). Cooking time varied from 14 min and 38 sec to 36 min and 21 sec. The special-grain beans lines of red tegument (Light Red Kidney, Red Kanner, Montcalm and Chinock) and cranberry (BRS Radiante) show high agronomic performance and reduced cooking time under the evaluated conditions.
Phaseolus vulgaris L.; Interaction of Genotype and environment; Morphological characteristics; Bean-quality; Bean-cooking
