Fava Bean (Vicia faba)
Patrick Byrne
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
Corresponding author<EMAIL_ADDRESS>OUTLINE
- Overview
- Origin and domestication
- Production and use
- Conservation and breeding
- Favism
- References
- Chapter information
1. OVERVIEW
Fava bean (Vicia faba) is also known by many other names: faba bean, broad bean, horse bean, Windsor bean, and more. By whatever name, it is a productive and nutritious member of the legume family (Fabaceae), grown for its protein-rich seeds and as a forage and cover crop. Fava bean is commonly grown and consumed in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa and Latin America, but is an overlooked crop in the U.S. V. faba is an erect, robust plant 30-180 cm tall, adapted to cool, temperate climates (Purseglove, 1968). It has white flowers with a characteristic black blotch and fleshy seed pods with up to eight large, flat seeds.
2. ORIGIN AND DOMESTICATION
Fava bean is believed to have originated in the eastern Mediterranean region, but its exact place of origin is unknown. It is considered one of the oldest cultivated plants, with the earliest archaeological evidence for domestication of this species dating to over 10,000 years BP (Caracuta et al., 2015). Before 1492 when beans from the Americas began to arrive in Europe, this crop was the only edible bean grown on the continent. Fava bean became an important food crop in China after 1200 CE (van Wyk, 2005).
3. PRODUCTION AND USE
Being a cool-adapted crop, fava beans are grown in temperate regions such as northern Europe, or in highland areas or as a winter crop in the tropics. China is the largest producer, followed by Ethiopia and Australia (Khazaei et al., 2019). The seeds are eaten at all stages, from small, tender green beans to mature dried seeds. Pods and all can be eaten at the very youngest stage. Some authors recommend removing the outer seed coat from fresh beans, but others say that is an unnecessary step. However, the seed coats should be removed from dried beans after soaking overnight. Fava beans are prepared in a variety of ways: steamed, boiled, pureed, roasted, and in soups, tofu, and Egyptian-style falafel. In addition to culinary uses, the species is grown for animal feed and forage and as a cover crop to reduce erosion and add nitrogen to the soil. Fava beans are a very nutritious food, containing 18-35% protein, high levels of folate, iron, manganese, magnesium, and phosphorus (Maalouf et al., 2022; Wikipedia, 2023), and a variety of other health-promoting compounds (Martineau-Cote et al., 2022).
4. CONSERVATION AND BREEDING
V. faba is a diploid species with six pairs of chromosomes and a massive genome size estimated at 13 Gb of DNA (Jayakodi et al., 2023). It is predominately self-pollinated, but its flowers are visited by bees and therefore, considerable cross-pollination occurs. Fava bean does not produce fertile offspring in crosses with other species in the genus; howeve