Rice Bean

Botanical name : Vigna umbellata

Synonym : Phaseolus calcaratus

Common name : Ricebean, Rice bean.

Rice bean seeds look very similar to Adzuki bean seeds. They are significantly smaller but have the same colour and a similar shape.

Cultivation

Rice beans are warm season annuals. They should all be planted when the soil is warm. The are not frost tolerant.

Growing for seed

Rice beans are very straight-forward to grow for seed. The pods are left on the plant until they change colour. As there are few, if any, named cultivars of rice beans available to home growers in Australia there is no requirement for any isolation of home-grown crops.

Selection

Any plants showing disease should not have seed collected from them. Growing multiple plants will allow selection based on vigour or other performance factors such as numbers of set pods.

Harvest

The easiest way to identify when to harvest is to leave the pods on the plants until they have dried to brown pods. If needed, pods can be harvested when they change colour.

Because of the relatively long production period for these types of beans it is usually better to hand harvest individual pods as they ripen rather than trying to cut and dry an entire plant, particularly as pods are prone to splitting when they are dry. Even handling dried pods during picking can cause them to explosively split.

Be vigilant and collect any dried pods before rain. Once beans have dried on the plant, significant rain very easily causes mould to grow on the pods and seeds and these should not then be saved for replanting.

Processing

Once the pods are dry they can be broken open to get the seeds out. As the pods usually split very easily when dry just shaking the pods will usually free the seeds. The seed can then be easily sieved to separate it from the remaining plant material.

Contributors

Liz Worth