Selecting high-yielding and stable common bean lines using the factor analytic selection tools

Common bean is widely consumed and cultivated in Brazil, especially the "Carioca" and "Black" varieties, which make up 70% and 20% of total production, and 61% and 17% of national consumption, respectively. In Brazil, common bean production extends from the South to the North and includes three growing seasons: wet, dry, and winter. Due to environmental variability, cultivar performance significantly varies across regions and seasons owing to genotype-by-environment interaction (GEI). It is essential to explore GEI in multi-environment trials for better decision-making when selecting and recommending cultivars. Furthermore, taking growing seasons into account can maximize genetic gains, shaping breeding strategies for the development of season-specific, high-yielding lines. Therefore, our objective was to identify high-yielding and stable lines by evaluating their productivity and stability across multi-environments, employing Factor Analytic Selection Tools (FAST) and comparing the genetic gains between different seasons and an all-seasons approach. We assessed 34 lines in three replicates across 16 environments during 2018, 2019, and 2020 in three cropping seasons: wet, dry, and winter. These trials were conducted by the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas using a randomized complete block design; it's worth noting that not all lines were evaluated in every environment. For our evaluation, we used the Factor analytic mixed models and selected the best model based on the Akaike Information Criterion, the percentage of explained variance, and the average semivariances ratio. Then we estimated the selection tools, specifically overall performance, and root mean square deviation for stability. We set a selection percentage of 15%, selecting the top six high-performing and stable lines with a weight ratio of 2:1 for performance and stability, respectively. The top-performing lines were L28, L30, L27, L12, L14, and L25 for the wet season; L27, L28, L33, L34, L21, and L32 for the dry season; L23, L24, L27, L31, L21, and L12 for the winter season; and L27 excelled in all seasons.