1. Varietal Creation

Ex Colombia, Pan American Breeding Programme of the 1950's bred by Louis Camacho of the Instituto Colombiana de Agropecuaria.

Bred at INRA Versailles by Bannerot's group by crossing Contender with Cornell 49-242. Used as secondary source of 'Are' anthracnose resistance gene.

One of three rather similar breeding lines released by INRA to myself (then working in Uganda) and French seed companies in which the 'Are' gene had been put into BC4 lines of 'improved' Coco nain blanc precoce beans. This line was used directly in hybridization breeding after receipt and also selected through line breeding as a pure line and subsequently released in France as Coquette. It is probably a 'sib' line of Coblanc released by another Company but it is shorter and of earlier maturity than that cultivar.

A single plant selection from a PI line of the Brown Swedish class which may in fact have been the old Weibull variety Stella which it closely resembled. It has very early maturity and an upright habit with an adequately long strong hypocotyl. The parent is susceptible to but highly tolerant of loss from BCMV1.

Bred by myself, (mostly while in Uganda), ex Diacol Nima X Cofinel. Stable high yield, Anthacnose resistance by 'Are' gene, multiple resistance to BCMV and highly tolerant / resistant to Halo Blight.

Bred at Eyragues by a breeder of Clause S. A., in Southern France, from a back cross of the older variety Mistral with a source of the 'Are' gene. This may have been a parental line put out from INRA rather than Cornell 49-242 but detail is not available to me. Opal had many excellent attributes including BCMV resistance (genes unsure but probably protected I gene, i.e. backed up by recessives). Plant habit was excellent stiff upright with very long hypocotyl, the well defined character best associated with easy and clean harvesting.

A determinate Dark Red Kidney bean bred at Prosser, Washington State for USDA by Doug Burke which was bred for multiple disease resistance. It never became widely used, if at all, as a commercial variety having seeds rather plumper and larger than the most acceptable DRKs to European and U. S. canners. It is probably one dominant gene 'up' in the color controlling part of it genome, through having the 'Ane' allele at the 'cloudiness' (anebulosus) locus. (that I believe to be a synonym of 'D' expressed in 'rkrk').

('LIMOUSIN'). This very old French cultivar had been maintained by a rural family in the Limousin Region of Central France where I found it and received a few seeds. It is the size of a quite large White kidney Bean but flatter and with a good dark colorfast greenness. While the provenance to M de F is strictly unsure Limousin did indeed correspond closely to the description of the obsolete cultivar. It was 100% susceptible to BCMV through seed transmission but tolerated an extraordinary level of chlorotic and mosaic symptom expression. (This also was true of many of the classic old French cultivars which we used to use as spreaders when assessing resistances in 'dirty patch' nurseries.)

A purified breeding line selected from an unusually small seeded example of Chevrier Vert market beans that were highly variable, bought from the market place in Le Mans in the mid 1970's. The line retained its very small seed character but was highly susceptible to common strains of anthracnose. Its benefit lay solely in its small size. I used it in France in my joint programme with Claeys Luck to create lines of 'Pea bean verts' to try to interest the canners in novelty in the shape and size of green seeded types of dry bean.

A Flageolet vert variety bred in France and commercially successful at least for some years. It was screened from a large collection of FV varieties assessed by Griffaton Selection / Claeys-Luck to be used as a parent in our joint breeding programme.

This was a Navy Pea Bean variety developed from material originating at CIAT (ex-Rico 23) during a previous phase of my breeding endeavours in Africa. Rocket had an excellent plant habit (very erect Type 2 with a very minimal vine) and productivity but its seeds at that time were considered not to conform sufficiently closely to H. J. Heinz Ltd's exacting and restrictive specifications. The seeds were a little too small and a little too shiny and in laboratory tests were said to be insufficiently uniform in cooking quality. Rocket was assessed for several years and sites under that provisional denomination along with other material from other sources in PGRO trials. A rather similar 'Navy' bean with the same name later appeared and was marketed commercially by a well-known North American seed company.

A line of very 'bright' seeded flat white beans, rather large for their class, of Great Northerns, beans bred by Coyne and Schuster at University of Nebraska for 'moderate tolerance' of Xanthomonas (Common Blight) and 3 strains of the bacterial wilt pathogen Corynebacterium flaccumfaciens. Parentage was GN 1140 X PI 165078

('BRAZIL 2'). A selection made in the Brazilian national bean programme under Clibas Viera's direction many years ago. I believe this was a direct selection from a N. E. Brazilian land race. Bico d'ouro was one of a widely genetically based range of cultivars entered by CIAT in far ranging international adaptation trials. In the only U. K. trial, at Woburn, in which my Horsehead, used as local check, ranked top of 40 entries. Bico d'ouro, which was an upright Type 2 indeterminate type with warm brown seeds, ranked second and its good adaptation in this environment, was extraordinary and unexpected.

A Coscorron line received in 1979 from Mr Victor Alamos, bean breeder of Semillas Tuniche in Chile from an aborted programme in which he was attempting to introduce anthracnose resistance into new varieties of the this traditional important Chilean market class. This line was large seeded and with the class-typical yellow-stripes-over-white ground seeds and deep red fresh pods drying to rusty tan. The nearly fixed line was derived from a cross between a traditional (not identified) line of Coscorrons from the Chilean National collection, and the French variety Opal (see above). Al-10-M had a vigorous bushy indeterminate growth habit and matured late in Cambridge but was nevertheless not too late to be harvestable.

I received this variety in the early 1970's from Oregon State University, by kindness of James Baggett. A collection of segregating material of a great range of colors obtained, I understood, by Tex Frazier and Jim Baggett from crossing two traditional pole Romano lines, Old Italian Pole Romano and Medford with Bush Blue Lake determinates. From this population, by plant to line selection, I developed after several generations a practically fixed line with the seed and pod type of the Old Italian Romano. To that line I gave the pre-name Zillis (named after a charming village in the Romansch speaking are of Switzerland). Zillis itself, despite selection for earliness and habit was too late in maturity and floppy in growth habit to meet my criteria of acceptability for use in the U. K. Thus it was used in new crosses to try to improve habit while recovering the highly desirable Romano pod characteristics.

This was an advanced line selection entered in adaptation trials by a commercial plant breeding station in Germany which I believe subsequently formed the basis a new variety Bina (which appeared practically identical). XPR35 had large and very fleshy pods, but not Romano type pods (being much too round and not wide enough), white seeds and a superb stiff upright determinate plant habit.

A black-seeded 'filet' line 'bred' by Clause in France with technical support from INRA was made available to me by INRA Versailles as a potentially useful breeding parent in a commercial programme I ran with others in France for some years. Rachel was said to have multiple disease resistance genes introduced by 'pyramiding' and in particular combining several different anthracnose resistance genes identified in Mexican lines by INRA. The genes were sufficient to overcome the then new 'Ebnet' strain of anthracnose accidentally dispersed into European trials from a commercial breeding programme in Germany. It also had so called 'protected I gene' resistance to races of BCMV. Rachel was rather similar to and probably closely related to the commercially very successful filet-sans-fil Delinel.

This Canadian bred cultivar from Gen-Tec Seeds was by far the earliest maturing Pinto bean from North America trialled in a large nursery of potential germplasm obtained by me from many sources in N. America several years ago. There seemed then some possibility of this variety finding a market place and my Company, as agent for the breeder, tried unavailingly to achieve this. Despite earliness the cultivar had a major shortcoming, this was a degree of fleshiness of the pods and low level of structural fibre in the stems that led to the cultivar performing very badly with any degree of field re-wetting occurring during the maturation of the crop. Probably associated with this is its very high susceptibility to both Botrytis and Sclerotinia. The seed characteristics however are those of an 'ideal' pinto.

A bean bred for Clause Seed Company by M. PILLET before that company's programme was discontinued. We screened a range of extra-fine podded 'French' beans and then used two (Callide and Label) in hybridisation work.

Coded Green-seeded French bean bulk this material comprised a population of early generation single plant selections from a pool of material obtained by Nutting and Speed from NPI Seeds of the USA. With permission to use for study and hybridisation in the NS bean breeding programme I acquired this material as part of a deal on the dissolution of N & S.

This is a straight selection from the N & S bulk and was used during its re-selection years as a seed parent. The parentage of the AS lines was not disclosed but clearly relates to the work with the 'persistent green' trait developed by the famous breeder Bill Dean.