Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Beans (Phaseolus spp.) are among the most economically and nutritionally important crops world-wide. Beans possessing the "popping" trait (can be popped much like popcorn) hold significant promise for development of new foods, particularly snack foods, that can help combat significant national health concerns, particularly in school-aged children, such as obesity and diabetes. Advanced breeding lines will be prepared for varietal release while other breeding lines will build the foundation of new bean cultivars that are highly nutritious and have properties particularly amenable for generation of high-protein, high nutrition snack foods, while at the same time protecting the environment and promoting healthy soils in our farming systems. This project will address those goals by accomplishing four objectives that focus on: 1) improving bean advanced breeding lines with the popping and other enhanced qualities/traits; 2) determining field performance of accessions and advanced and newly developed breeding lines under varying field conditions, focusing on agronomic and bean quality traits; 3) developing nutritious snack foods based on the project's advanced breeding lines, focusing on popping trait-derived properties while maintaining high nutrition; and 4) generating consumer acceptance data for the new advanced bean breeding lines/varieties and food products developed, evaluating economics of commercial popping bean production and providing information regarding market development potential. Dissemination to stakeholders and the public will be via extension activities.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
40%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
The project has four major Objectives that integrate popping bean crop refinement from field to product with several different sub-objectives and varying activities applied to each.Objective 1 (Project sub-team 1): Enhance existing popping bean germplasm through selection for desirable agronomic traits and multiple disease resistance, particularly resistance to bean common mosaic virus (BCMV) and common bacterial blight (CBB).Objective 2 (Project sub-team 2): Perform field trials to evaluate the agronomic performance of popping bean breeding lines under varying field conditions and management practices, focusing on agronomic and popping bean quality traits.Objective 3 (Project sub-team 3): Further develop nutritious foods based on advanced popping bean lines, focusing on popping trait-derived properties while maintaining high nutrition and food safety.Objective 4 (Project sub-team 4): Generate consumer and producer acceptance and economic data for advanced popping bean lines and food products developed. Generate enterprise budgets to demonstrate economically viable production at the field level. Evaluate market development potential for value-added products and disseminate results to stakeholders and the public via extension activities.
Project Methods
This is a very diverse project in terms of team membership disciplines, geographic locations and types of activities that will be carried out by different team members. As a result, there will be a diversity of approaches utilized to address the goals and accomplish the objectives of the project. Integrating basic breeding efforts with stakeholder involvement in downstream applications (e.g., growers, food processors) will yield advanced breeding lines, potentially varieties, that are most suitable for use in further development of bean market classes that contain the popping trait. The project activities will thus support thefour Hs:Healthy Farms,Healthy Food, aHealthy (Sustainable) Environment andHealthy Communities.The activities carried out for each objective will generate information that will benefit all other objectives while each objective will not rely on the success of the other objectives (no objective stacking).For Objective 1:This project will(1) advanceexistingand(2) develop new breeding linesofPhaseolus vulgariswith the popping trait that also have properties suitable for growth and production in the US. Existing advanced breeding lines developed by project team membersare suitable for direct release. Project field trial activities under Obj. 2will expand data supporting their performance in various regions of the US and activities under Obj. 4 will get these lines to food companies and consumers to familiarize them with popping beans. In addition, the project will generate new breeding lines with further improvements to agronomic and end-use quality attributes. Along with high popping percentage, additional traits to be maintained/combined include (1) photoperiod insensitivity, (2) plant growth habit, (3) protein/fiber/oligosaccharides/nutritional qualities, (4) introduction/maintenance of disease (especially virus) resistance, and (5) seed yield. To complement the breeding efforts and elucidate trait interactions, Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and biparental QTL mapping will be conducted. The ability to track important QTL in current and future bean breeding efforts, as well as detailed chemical and nutritional analysis of the beans, will enable breeders to introduce these traits into their programs.For Objective 2:The Project Team will identify production conditions under both conventional and organic farming practices that not only lead to higher performance but also increased crop utilization. This will include field growth studies at various sites in MI, ND, NE, OR and WA (long day conditions) and HI (short-day conditions) to evaluate impacts under varying field conditions. Performance of various breeding lines will be evaluated, including yield and quality trait data generation such as seed size and yield, popping efficiency, disease resistance, nutritional quality (protein and specific amino acid levels, sugar and phenolic compound composition), etc.In addition, efforts underObjective 2will provide early field screening of lines in Year 1 leading to evaluation and selection ofElitepopping bean lines in Year 4 of the project under different environmental and agronomic conditions. Field trials will help direct the selection process, generating critical data to feed back into molecular marker analyses to connect genotype with phenotype under production conditions and aid in downstream gene identification efforts. The potential environmental impact of growing popping beans will also be determined.For Objective 3:The Project Team will develop and evaluate food processing methods to produce different snack foods from the various advanced breeding lines that are generated, such as popping of the beans or use of extrusion technology, and evaluate those products for nutritional quality and consumer acceptance (Obj. 4). Popping methods for the best quality of bean varieties will be standardized for home and industry. The developed snack production methods will then be tested for scale-up at Stakeholder Partner facilities. The different advanced breeding lines developed through this project's efforts will be evaluated, and results from extrusion/snack food development efforts will be an integral part of the breeding effort; this is a fully integrated project.Objective 3thusfocuses on development and evaluation of highly nutritious snack foods that utilize popping beans as their major ingredient, such as directly popped beans and extruded food products, while maintaining high nutrition- and health-promoting properties in the foods. During the initial part of the project, nutritional and processing quality assessments of the breeding lines will be made, and feedback will be provided to the breeding team. This will include evaluation of select breeding lines identified in Obj. 1 and 2 for other properties in addition to their nutritional value, including processing properties (thermal and pasting properties) and development of the snacks using extrusion, microwave processing and other food preparation techniques including multi-cooker and stove-top popping.For Objective 4:The project will ensure that a sustainable supply chain from farm to fork is developed for popping beans. The viability of commercial-scale production of different advanced breeding lines developed through this project's efforts will be evaluated in diverse soil types and climates. Sensory analysis and consumer acceptability of the new snack products (i.e., popped beans, extruded products) will be evaluated using trained panelists and consumer groups. Consumer groups will include the target audience of school-age children, through collaboration with school nutrition professionals. School nutrition professionals have indicated that identifying and preparing food choices that meet federal guidelines for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), while also being consumed by students, are some of their biggest challenges. In particular, meeting the requirement for beans/legumes in meal patterns is difficult and time-consuming and vegetables (including beans/peas/legumes) contribute the highest amount of plate waste in schools. Policy makers, including school administrators, producers and industry representatives, including seed producers, growers, and food processors, will be informed of project progress through our strong existing networks and extension programs. Efforts addressing Objective 4 will also focus on societal issues associated with further refinement of a developing crop and inclusion of activities that will stimulate interest in popping beans as a food product and as an economically viable farm crop.