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Sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is an annual herbaceous plant of the Solanaceae family, which is one of the most important agricultural crops due to its exceptional economic importance, the nutritional value of its fruits and its confirmed antioxidant activity. The aim of this work was to determine the influence of the application of calcite-based biostimulants during the growing season on the germination of sweet pepper seeds. In the 2019 growing season, the calcite-based biostimulants Eco Green and Zeogreen+P were foliar applied on two sweet pepper cultivars (bell fruit type – ‘Šorokšari’ and capia fruit type – ‘Kurtovska kapija’). At the end of the growing season, 300 seeds from each cultivar were collected (100 seeds from plants treated with each of the two biostimulants and 100 seeds from plants that had not been treated during the growing season - control) and placed for germination under controlled conditions at a constant temperature of 25 oC and a light regime of 16/8 h day/night. At the end of the experimental period, the seed germination parameters were calculated. It was found that the application of the calcite-based biostimulant Eco Green had a statistically significant positive effect on the germinability (G, %), mean germination rate (MR), the uncertainty of the germination process (U) and germination index (GI) in both cultivars and on mean germination time (MGT, day) in the cultivar ‘Kurtovska kapija’. The calcite-based biostimulant Zeogreen had no statistically significant positive effect on the germination parameters, except for the germinability (G, %) in the cultivar ‘Kurtovska kapija’.

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) exhibits a wide range of seed coat colors and this morphological trait is widely used in cultivar identification and assessment of diversity within this species. With an advancement in technology and informatics, new methods of assessing seed color are emerging in addition to traditionally used visual observation. Due to a great variety of color measuring techniques, the evaluation of the agreement between methods is needed prior to using the methods interchangeably. Seed coat color in terms of CIE L*a*b* color coordinates of 100 common bean accessions belonging to five mono-colored landraces was assessed using two methods, colorimeter and Computer vision. The percentage difference between the two methods across all samples for L* color coordinate was 5.81%, for a* color coordinate 23.32% and for b* color coordinate 44.44%. According to Bland-Altman difference plot there is a considerable lack of agreement between the two methods. However, using stepwise discriminant analysis revealed that colorimeter method correctly classified 97% of accessions into their respective landrace, while the classification success of the Computer vision was 99%.

Common bean is one of the most cultivated and consumed grain legumes worldwide, showing a high level of genetic diversity. Here is presented a detailed review of development and mapping of simple sequence repeats (SSRs, microsatellite markers) in the common bean. In the last 25 years, common bean has been the subject of numerous genetic studies, in which the identification and use of SSRs were conducted, and lead to the development of genetic maps. First genetic maps of common bean have been developed in the 1990s and were based on different molecular markers, and included domestication genes and important agronomic traits. Later, SSRs allowed the genetic mapping of more narrow crosses that are often of interest in plant breeding. Most genetic maps have been correlated with the core map established in the recombinant inbred population BAT93 x Jalo EEP558, and includes different markers, RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism), RAPD (random amplified polymorphic DNA), AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism), and SSRs in particular. More than 2,000 SSR markers are available for the common bean and they are an important tool to evaluate the genetic diversity of common bean landraces. SSRs are also useful to evaluate intra-specific diversity within the genus Phaseolus.