Nutritional and culinary quality of bush bean populations intercropped with maize

Summary The intereropping of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and maize (Zea mays L.) is a common practice in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In this experiment, 25 populations of bush bean were evaluated for nutritional and culinary traits of dry seed and immature pod in sole crop and in intercrop in two years and in two locations, in order to determine whether selection of bush bean in sole crop can result in genetic progress for intercrop.There were no differences in the population means between cropping systems. Significant differences were detected among populations for all traits tudied except starch content, crude ash, water absorption and coat proportion. Population x environment interaction was significant for pod thickness. Bean populations did not interact with cropping systems for any trait, although there were differences between cropping systems for crude protein. These results suggest that a sole crop system provides sufficient information to select bean populations efficiently for the bush bean-maize intercropping system, although the advanced generations of the breeding program should be tested for quantitative traits such as protein content in the appropriate cropping system (intercropping) to know the competitive ability with the associated species. This would permit to choose bush bean populations which complement more efficiently and would be less competitive with the maize population.