Tepary Bean (Phaseolus acutifolius)
Katheryn Chen
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
Corresponding author<EMAIL_ADDRESS>OUTLINE
- Overview
- Domestication and history
- Production and use
- Research and breeding
- Expanding production range
- References
- Chapter information
1. OVERVIEW
Tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius A. Gray) is a pulse crop closely related to common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). Like common bean, its seeds are rich in protein, fiber, and other essential nutrients. While teparies are typically cultivated for dry seed production, beans can also be processed into meal, their leaves and tender sprouts may be eaten, or they may be used as a forage or cover crop. As with other legumes, nitrogen fixing microbes colonize the roots of tepary beans, making them valuable for healthy crop rotation.
Tepary beans are native to desert and semi-arid regions of North and Central America. Just as wild tepary beans thrive in the conditions of the Sonoran Desert, their cultivated counterparts are renowned for needing very little water to grow. As climate change threatens the future of agriculture, the natural drought and heat tolerance provided by tepary bean becomes increasingly valuable to breeders and growers. In recent years, this once overlooked crop is now gaining traction both as a consumer-ready product and as a genetic resource for improving related legumes.
2. DOMESTICATION AND HISTORY
Tepary beans are native to the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and Central America, and are best adapted to the hot, dry climate found in the western side of this range. Across this range, wild teparies were gathered for consumption, though this practice waned around the early twentieth century (Wolf, 2018). Archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that domestication began 5,000 years ago in Mexico, shaping traits such as germination time, pod dehiscence (shattering), seed size, and more (Nabhan, 1978; Garvin and Weeden, 1994). Traditionally in the Sonoran Desert, cultivated teparies were planted with corn, sorghum, and pinto beans, and irrigated with monsoon flood waters (Wolf, 2018).
Cultivated teparies have been an important subsistence crop across its native range, holding cultural significance to Tribes such as the Tohono O’odham, whose mythology speaks of white tepary beans scattered across the night sky (Wolf, 2018). The production of tepary beans saw a boom in the beginning of the twentieth century, though their popularity quickly dropped due to war, changing tastes, and the introduction of mechanized irrigation (Small, 2014; Wolf, 2018). Climate concerns and interest in expanding agricultural diversity are causing a resurgence of interest in tepary beans in recent years.
3. PRODUCTION AND USE
Tepary beans are not currently produced at the scale of common beans or other commercially successful legumes. They are generally grown on smallholder farms where they are valued as drought-tolerant cover crops, low-input forage or hay for