Fava breeding

[Steph S]

Selecting for whole pod quality might be more worthwhile.  Even so my yields have been scanty.  Our springs are very cold and late, but by the time favas are big enough to bear it's already hot.  They tolerate summer  drought (able to persist just rain fed) rather well but without bearing any pods.  For the several years that I've grown them, they only started to set pods in late summer early fall.   By that time I was getting antsy to pull them and prep the bed for garlic.   So there's not a lot of crop potential here that I can see, but I'm still thinking there might be larger beaned varieties that would make it worthwhile.
The fact they will hang in there and grow without fert or water or attention of any kind does make them a good bet for fallow ground care, even if they only make enough seed to replant somewhere.

[William Schlegel]

Shelled and planted a few favas today. It is the perfect timing for it.

[Richard Watson]

Shame that beans are not allowed to be imported in NZ as Fava beans do so well where I am, spring cropping produces a large amount of seed.

[William Schlegel]

Planted more favas today in the pile base after burning my burn pile yesterday. No sign of germination yet on the first planting.

[gmuller]

A quick update on my community cooperative breeding project, and a few notes.
Green seed coat seems tightly linked to coloured flowers. I selected out green seeds from my 80 parent grex, grew it out, culling any white flowers, and replanted the next generation in the austral autumn. not flowering yet but this is our 'Festive Fava' project which a few growers here are trialing.

Next year I will try to build a low-tannin (favaism free) grex from the thre accessions with white flowers that are available here.

our cooperative breeding project is structured around easy eating traits.

Im also not a fan of the thick seed coat on dry fava beans, and want big beans. So I figured 'easy rehydrate' should select for thinner or at least less tough seed coats. We picked out the largest seeds from the 15 or so kilos of seed i had from my grexes, soaked all our seeds in water overnight, and planted the 50% most rehydrated. We should be able to see if this has made a better cooking bean at least partially this harvest - in november december.

last season processing pods i noticed the crushable pod trait, which in snowpea breeding indicates low fibre. I figured that we could select for low fibre pods at harvest by selecting for this trait, which should give us a nice low fibre pod for fresh green eating. (chuck young pods on a grill, smother with garlic and EVOO).
We might need to wait another season for a god test of both these projects.
gm

[William Schlegel]

Harvested some favas today. Found one or two plants that might be the green seeded red flowered Fava. Otherwise it is mostly tan and purple. Strong founder effects are prevailing from the original five packets of Early Windsor, Windsor, Lofthouse, Frog Island Nation, and Ianto's return. Most of my additions of the last five years or so are now presumably extirpated or maybe crossed in or otherwise undetectable. I probably harvested about a pound. Enough for seed if I don't get more picked. I shelled as I picked out of curiosity. I picked the smaller patches more throughly as I thought they might contain some more recent additions.

[William Schlegel]

Picked some more Fava's last weekend and found a few of the brown speckled variety I thought I had lost. Still missing some of the others.

[Pam Golden]

Because I have so little space, I do not actively breed Favas, but I want to report that our San Francisco community garden had to stop growing them at all for several years due to Fava Bean Rust Disease. I don't see that anyone is breeding to seek resistance to this disease, though I wish they were. I have found resistant varieties on the web, but they are not available to the home gardener. I have begun tentatively planting a few seeds (common Windsor) in my home garden. I did have some rust appearing but pulled the plants out before it became widespread, I eat the immature pods, rolled in olive oil and lightly salted, roasted at 450 degrees F for 20 minutes or until there are brown areas on the pods. These are a delicious treat. I have found the leaves boring, but think that in a Persian-style soup that contains a large amount of greens, they would be fine.
     I also wanted to to share that I found a researcher at Cal State Chico who has many lines of favas that he is growing and that he is hoping to find a way to work favas into the commercial food supply. He is Hossein Zakeri, Associate Professor of Plant Science,Office: 213 Plumas Hall, 940W. 1st St. Chico, CA 95929, Agronomy Lab: CSUC University Farm, 311 Nicholas Schouten Ln, Chico CA 95928.
Through Dr. Zakari, I also found Planet Earth Observatory, a nonprofit that is growing Favas in L.A. and has published a 32 page book of international recipes using the beans. To get the book, go to planetearthobservatory.org, click on "What We Do" then on "Favas." Go to "Fava Recipe Book" (on the left on my screen) Clicking on the words "Recipe Book" leads to a screen about it. Scroll to the bottom of the page, to the form to request a book for a $10 donation. Click "Send." You can also use the form to request a free PDF copy of the book. The book includes recipes from all over the world, and even a recipe for brownies made with "fava bean flour."

[Cathy A]

I grew favas only once, because they just didn't produce enough to justify their space in my tiny garden.

I do think they have a lot of potential. I'm not sure where one would get some rust-resistant strains to start a breeding project, unless you can find an academic or government source.