Dive Brief:
- The warming planet is driving agriculture researchers to devise new plants to be able to thrive in a hotter environment. One such focus is a new type of bean.
- According to NPR, the "heat-beater'' beans are a cross between two strains: the common bean, such as pinto and kidney beans, and the tepary bean, which is a smaller, lesser-known bean commonly grown in the American Southwest.
- Though the tepary bean does not produce much of a harvest, it can thrive under unfavorable conditions, including heat and drought, which are genetic traits that could help the common bean adapt to such conditions when they are cross-bred together.
Dive Insight:
The world's population relies heavily on beans for food, and if common beans cannot withstand warmer temperatures, this could threaten global food security in the future. To solve this problem, researchers are taking the time to manually cross-breed bean plants and have thus far bred 30 heat-resistant varieties. They took this route instead of genetically modifying the beans in a laboratory, which could be a much more controversial solution to the problem. If these cross-bred beans can produce large enough crops, bean farmers may be able to increase the amount of beans they can sell each year and sustain the needs for larger bean yields to feed a growing population.