Nuña popping bean: a kind of witness of the first steps of common bean domestication

Abstract

Nuñas could be a new, nutritious and healthy snack food with potential for North America, Europe, Japan and other industrialized areas, but they are unsuitable for commercial production in temperate zones because they are photoperiod sensitive. Popping ability is quantitatively inherited and controlled mainly by dominant and epistatic effects. Eight QTLs were identified for popping ability on linkage groups 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9 and accounted together for 31% of the phenotypic variance. These QTLs would be good candidates for marker assisted selection to improve popping in nuña bean cultivars for their production as healthy snacks.