In order to analyze morphological characteristics of locally cultivated common bean landraces from Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), thirteen quantitative and qualitative traits of 40 P. vulgaris accessions, collected from four geographical regions (Northwest B&H, Northeast B&H, Central B&H and Sarajevo) and maintained at the Gene bank of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences in Sarajevo, were examined. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the proportion of variance retained in the first two principal components was 54.35%. The first principal component had high contributing factor loadings from seed width, seed height and seed weight, whilst the second principal component had high contributing factor loadings from the analyzed traits seed per pod and pod length. PCA plot, based on the first two principal components, displayed a high level of variability among the analyzed material. The discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) created 3 discriminant functions (DF), whereby the first two discriminant functions accounted for 90.4% of the variance retained. Based on the retained DFs, DAPC provided group membership probabilities which showed that 70% of the accessions examined were correctly classified between the geographically defined groups. Based on the taxonomic distance, 40 common bean accessions analyzed in this study formed two major clusters, whereas two accessions Acc304 and Acc307 didn’t group in any of those. Acc360 and Acc362, as well as Acc324 and Acc371 displayed a high level of similarity and are probably the same landrace. The present diversity of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s common been landraces could be useful in future breeding programs.

Abstract About 130 Orobanche spp. occured on cultivated crops. O. cumana , O. ramosa , O. minor and O. aegyptica are the most often. They are obligatory parasites that attack hundreds of varieties of dicotiledonous plants in warm and dry areas all over the world. All these species have got completely atrophied root, thus they live on the roots of other plants. They are particularly parasites on sunflower, maize, tobacco, tomato, peas, hop, hemp, and broad-bean crops. Orobanche ramosa is a parasitic species occuring most frequently on the roots of hemp and tobacco, but also on other crops such as: tomato, sunflower, potato, hop, carrot, maize, cabbage, common vetch, etc. Its origin is the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, but it is also spread all over the world. This parasite is propagated only by seed, which is most frequently spread by man activities, machines, wind, and water. It causes serious damages to crops. It occurs on some weeds as well. Monitoring of this parasite was made in the course of the last two years in the region of Herzegovina. In this region, this species has been known since the beginning of tobacco growing. But this species can be seen nowadays mostly on the tomato, in the greenhouses, and in the open fields as well. This parasite has been found causing serious damages on tomato in the villages of the municipality of Ljubuski, such as: Sipovaca, Veljaci, Vojnici, Klobuk, Grab, Kocusa, and also Vitina. The following measures are advised to control this parasite: phytosanitary measures cultural control, host-plant resistance, biological and chemical control.

Tomato fruits (cv. Belle) were harvested at the middle-red ripe stage and exposed at 5 o C and 10 o C for up to 28 days. Weight loss percentage was faster for fruits held at 10 o C compared to 5 o C. While the weight lost during storage at 10 o C was 18.7%, fruits at 5 o C over the same period showed a 9.6% loss. There were only slight changes in soluble solids and titratable acids content during the storage period studied. Although soluble solids increased slightly over the storage period, there were no significant differences between the two temperatures. The titratable acidity, expressed as citric acid, tended to be lower at 5 o C, with a significant difference observed only on Day 14 of storage. Total reduction of initial vitamin C content was 3.5 mg/100 g (at the 5 o C) and 2.5 mg/100 g (at the 10 o C). The results showed that lower temperature did not significantly reduce vitamin C content in comparison with higher temperature, with the exception on Day 7 of storage. At both temperatures and at every stage of storage time pericarp firmness decreased as storage time increased. The decrease in firmness was delayed by the lower temperature. The colour development (value a) of skin increased with increasing storage duration at both temperatures, but there were no differences among temperatures.

Field experiment was conducted to evaluate growth, yield and quality of leek (Allium porrum L.) under different nitrogen levels, on a heavy clay loam soil in the agro-climate of central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Treatments comprised four nitrogen levels (0, 50, 100 and 200 kg ha-1), using local leek variety Karentan. The levels of 100 and 200 kg ha-1 were repeated in split applications. Results demonstrated that increasing level of nitrogen to 200 kg ha-1 resulted in greater number of leaves per plant (14.4), maximum  leaves weight (194.6 g   plant-1), higher pseudo-stem diameter (36.3 mm), maximum pseudo-stem weight (146.5 g) and highest total yield (91.98 t ha-1). There was a linear increase in total yield from nitrogen fertilization (r2 = 0.87). There was also slight evidence that higher nitrogen amount decrease dry matter. Furthermore, increase in nitrogen levels had no appreciable effect on chemical composition (total and reducing sugars, vitamin C) of leek.