This experiment was conducted at Barrage Horticultural Research Station (BHRS), ARC, Qaloubia governorate, and Plant Pathology Research Institute, Giza, Egypt during the period from 2021 to 2022. The current study aimed to determine the genetic variability and heritability of dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) genotypes for some economic characters and develop new promising resistant lines to Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc, causative of root rot and stem rot. Forty-seven new lines of dry bean developed from previous breeding programs as well as three commercial cultivars, i.e., Giza 6, Karnak and Nebraska were used in this study. The results exhibited that the large portion of phenotypic variance (σ2p) was due to the genetic variance (σ2g). Furthermore, estimated broad-sense heritability showed high values (64 to 96%) in all traits, indicating that the observed significant phenotypic differences among the studied genotypes are of genetic nature and there are small environmental effects on the phenotypic variation. Therefore, these characters can be improved through selection based on phenotypic observations in early segregating generations in dry bean. Screening of studied genotypes for Sclerotium rolfsii resistance was carried out under controlled conditions. The obtained results showed that genotype D 6 recorded the highest level of resistance displaying the lowest disease severity percentage against S. rolfsii infection with 6.7%, followed by genotypes D 40, D 39, D 42 and D 46 with mean disease severity 20%.