Abstract: A total of 4 877 accessions of adzuki bean (Vigna angularis) are conserved in National Germplasm Conservation Center in China, but only a few of which have been used in adzuki bean improvement programme. Establishing a core collection of adzuki bean can simplify management and enhance utilization of genetic resources in adzuki bean research programmes. In this paper, Unweighted Pair-Group Method Using Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) was used to establish an adzuki bean core collection based on geographical distribution and phenotypic data. Finally, 8.92% of adzuki bean accessions were selected from entire collection as a core collection of 435 accessions sharing 98.3% phenotypes with the entire collection. The phenotypic correlations among different traits that may be under the control of co-adapted gene complexes were also preserved in the core collection. By different statistical methods such as comparison of mean using t-test, variance using F-test, phenotypic frequency distributions using χ²-test for the different traits, the core collection was validated to be a representative sample of the entire collection. This core collection will play an important role in the utilization of adzuki bean genetic resources.

Key words: Adzuki bean (Vigna angularis), Core collection, Phenotypes, Genetic resources