Bush bean is a popular vegetable as it is high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Assessment of the physiological quality of bush bean seeds is essential for ensuring better crop performance and yield, and the controlled deterioration technique is a reliable and practical tool for this purpose. The objective of this study was to determine the seed quality of two bush bean varieties using the controlled deterioration technique. Two bush bean varieties (Jhar Sheem-1 and Jhar Sheem-2) were induced with 12%, 16%, and 20% moisture levels for 0, 4, 8, and 16 days. Seed quality factors, such as, germination percentage, abnormal seedlings percentage, dead seed percentage, soil emergence percentage, root and shoot lengths, and dry matter content, were evaluated. In this study, 24 treatments were arranged as completely randomized design with 3 replications. Both varieties showed an identical performance at 12% moisture in 0 days of the aging period, but prominent differences were noticed at a highly deteriorated level of the factors. The percentage of normal seedlings declined to 85.34% in Treatment-24 (Jhar Sheem-2 at 20% moisture level with a 16-day aging period) compared to Treatment-1 (Jhar Sheem-1 at 12% moisture level with no aging period). Meanwhile, seedling abnormality increased by 22.00% in Treatment-11 (Jhar Sheem-1 at 20% moisture level with an 8-day aging period) relative to Treatment-1. Conversely, root and shoot dry matter were 93.06% and 28.62% lower, respectively, in Treatment-24 than Treatment-1. Moreover, highly remarkable (1%) relations were traced among all the traits, ranging from -0.466 (seed dry matter x abnormal seedling) to 0.983 (normal seedling x root length). Another finding was that among all the values about normal seedlings (i.e., the germination percentage); their affiliation with the soil emergence was prominent, i.e., 0.983. Thus, the outcomes revealed that the controlled deterioration test was highly effective in assessing the physiological conditions of the varieties. According to the vigor and quality performance, bush bean Variety-1 (Jhar Sheem-1) can be used as a parent for hybridization programs to produce superior inherent quality. Future investigations can be conducted to find more acceptable temperature and moisture trait limits among other bush bean varieties.
