Crisp, Fresh Garden Beans for Every Grower
Garden beans present great opportunities for growers. With fresh or processing marketing options, there are many ways to get these healthy legumes into the hands of customers. Syngenta Vegetable Seeds works alongside growers to understand their needs and challenges in this segment.
For fresh market beans, quality, yield, and taste are paramount.
“The biggest opportunity for garden beans for the fresh segment is a strong demand for consumption due to the trend to have convenient and healthy food,” said Johnny Parker, Product Specialist for Fresh Garden Beans.
Breeding Beans with Disease and Pest Management in Mind
The biggest focus for Syngenta breeders in the fresh bean market is yield potential. This means plants that consistently set lots of pods, and have the stress tolerance to withstand heat, drought, insects, and other challenges.
Some of the most problematic fungi and diseases for fresh market beans are bean mosaic virus (BCMV), beet curly top virus (BCTV), bacterial brown spot (Pss) and anthracnose (CI: 1). Most of Syngenta’s fresh market bean varieties are highly resistant to BCMV, and many have high resistance to CI:1; some varieties have intermediate resistance to BCTV and Pss as well.
When it comes to the bean pods themselves, most consumers, and therefore growers, are looking for a straight pod between 13 and 15 centimeters in length and 10 millimeters in diameter. A darker color is preferred. The plant, similar to processing bean plants, should be open with good air flow and a great root structure.
Syngenta breeders are meeting regularly with growers to understand their requirements to meet that consumer need.
“We spend a lot of time in the field with growers throughout the world understanding what their needs are because things are evolving very quickly in vegetables,” said Leith Plevey, Product Specialist in Australia. “So, we spend a lot of time with growers, both at the product development and field levels.”
In addition to meeting with growers in the field, Syngenta researchers meet with them in packing houses to understand how needs differ there.
“Obviously, we have to breed for traits that make the plant successful and bring the yields and quality that the growers need,” Parker explained. “We listen to what they have to say. We go back we bring that into the breeding program and then we bring that into the pipeline and into the portfolio.”
