Twenty landraces of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L .) from Sarconi and Rotonda two locations of Basilicata, a Southern Italy region, were screened for variation in seed storage proteins (phaseolin and phytohemagglutinin) by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS/PAGE and IEF-SDS/PAGE) . No variation of the main seed protein fractions was observed within each landrace . Phaseolin patterns type C and T were exhibited from the landraces ; the type C resulted predominant with a frequency of 70% . Only the C type was observed for the landraces of Rotonda, T and C for those from Sarconi . Two variants were observed for the phytohemagglutinin by SDS-PAGE, one was common to eighteen landraces . However, these variants submitted to IEF-SDS/PAGE resulted similar to the type TG2 described by Brown . The importance to safeguard these landraces is stressed by the observation that the more spread commercial cultivars of common bean growing in Southern-Italy had a T phaseolin pattern . A reduction of C type diffusion could produce the loss a typical trait of common bean in Mediterranean regions .