Thirty two years of common bean breeding in Minas Gerais state

The objective of the present work was to make critical analysis of the dry bean genetic breeding program in Minas Gerais in the last 32 years by lines x environments interactions and genetic progress evaluations. Data from 169 experiments conducted from 1974 to 2004 in 16 locations and three seasons per year were used. The average of the cultivar Carioca, test in all experiments, was used as indicator of environmental variation; and the average of the five best lines, under evaluation in each biennium, was used as indicator of phenotypic variation. The difference between these two averages was used as genetic deviation. Genetic progress was estimated by linear regression coefficient between genetic deviation Y (dependent variable) and biennium X (independent variable). The interactions among lines x seasons and lines x years were significant in most cases, however, their contributions to the total variation were inferior to the lines x locations. Thus, it was necessary to conduct experiments in a larger number of locations. The common bean breeding program at UFLA has been efficient and has selected lines with less risk for adoption for farmers.