HORTICULTURAL AND POTENTIAL BREEDING VALUE OF SUGAR PEA LANDRACES FROM NORTHWESTERN SPAIN

Twenty sugar pea (Pisum sativum L.) landraces common to northwestern S pain (Pontevedra), and potentially of interest as parental material, w ere evaluated at two locations and for 2 years to study the diversity among them for plant and pod physical quality traits. The main objecti ve was to identify landraces that could be included in breeding progra ms. Highly significant differences among landraces were found for most of the pod traits, such as length, width, length/width index, fresh w eight, and flowering date, Genotype-environment interactions were demo nstrated for only three traits of the 10 investigated. High values for correlation coefficients were mostly found for pod traits, but highly significant ones (i.e., P less than or equal to 0.01) were found for traits other than for pods, Most of the landraces were variable for qu alitative and quantitative traits, PSM-0070, PSM-0113, and PSM-0116 we re superior for earliness and pod physical quality, but were heterogen ous. PSM-0064, PSM-0066, PSM-0117, and PSM-0118 lacked pod parchment.