Any one here know much about how the genetics of bean plant growth genetics. Interested in try to get hold of some half runner beans, but they are virtually non-existent here in Oz. So I was wondering what the result of crossing a bush bean with a full climber would be in plant form. Would you get bush or climbers or something in between in growth out of such a cross
By "runner", do you mean Phaseolus coccineus? I have never seen a dwarf form.
https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/runner-bean-hestia-dwarf/9TM
I have about 4 or 5 runner bean dwarves that I'll finally be growing this year.
Hoping to grow them near a standard runner to see if they cross.
Mostly wanting to do that just because they're all crossed with domestics and stabilized.
One has an entirely white bean / seed. Others have the standard color for most runners.
Quote from: Diane Whitehead on 2023-03-18, 12:05:34 PMBy "runner", do you mean Phaseolus coccineus? I have never seen a dwarf form.
No, I mean Phaseolus vulgaris, common beans that are normally grown as bushes or pole varieties. There are some that grow to a height of 4 - 6 feet and I was curious as to what you would get, plant form wise by crossing a bush and pole bean.
No point suggesting alternative sources as import costs are prohibitive and the seeds are too thick to get through post sorting machines
Why the interest in half-runners?
I like to grow them in the (polenta) corn patch or with sunflowers. The pintos I've bought from whole food stores have usually been half-runners, as have a number of red kidney beans. I also have a number of other half-runners that I grow. All are dry beans, not for pods though I guess some at least would have edible pods if picked young.
Two that I grew this season are Tiger Eye and a small gold bean that used to be Nez Percé but got mixed up with another goldish bean called Cortona. I just call it Gold Bean now! These two would be fresh. I have others but they are pretty old by now so I couldn't vouch for their viability. They include Azores, Hopi Black, Mandan Shield and Molasses Face among others.
Anyway, happy to send some your way for next season. Just PM me.
Raymondo,
The interest in half runners has come about due to combination of bad back, which does not like picking bush beans for extended periods and steady constant winds that limit the use of trellis's for pole beans. Will pm
I also don't like bending over to pick bush beans and it's hard to get nice dry beans from them because of wind and rainstorms that knock down and splash them with mud. Large vine pole beans are a hassle because I got tired of building all those big trellises. I have developed a new trellis system that is much easier to build and move but I still favor the half-runner, or what I call semi-runner, that is pole beans that only get six feet tall or less.
I don't know about the genetics of how the growth habit is inherited. My overall bean populations are pretty mixed up and sometimes some of my semi-runner seeds revert to full pole or bush types.
Quote from: reed on 2023-03-20, 08:24:51 AMI also don't like bending over to pick bush beans and it's hard to get nice dry beans from them because of wind and rainstorms that knock down and splash them with mud. Large vine pole beans are a hassle because I got tired of building all those big trellises. I have developed a new trellis system that is much easier to build and move but I still favor the half-runner, or what I call semi-runner, that is pole beans that only get six feet tall or less.
I don't know about the genetics of how the growth habit is inherited. My overall bean populations are pretty mixed up and sometimes some of my semi-runner seeds revert to full pole or bush types.
I've had a theory for a while that some legumes have what I would call "conditional habits". That is, the habit they show (be it pole, semi-runner, runner or bush) has to do not only with their genetics, but with the feedback they are getting from their environment. So they have the ability to modify their habit based on what the sense their circumstances are.
To us my rice beans for an example (I'd like to use common beans, but I have more personal experience with growing rice beans so I know their ways a little better,) the default form is pole (though it appears that bush DOES exist in the population.) If the bean finds something it can grab onto, it will wrap around and make a nice long vine. But if it DOESN'T two things can happen. Some still try and throw out a vine and become ground runners. But quite a lot throw out no vines at all, and basically turn into very short bush plants (really, single stems with a few permanent leaves.) that go straight onto flowering. And, if I take the seed from a plant that did that, and plant it next to a support the next year, it will go right back to climbing and vice versa).
That's an interesting theory and one I think might have merit. I was fortunate enough to acquire a very old bean called Refugee, supposedly grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. It has a number somewhat odd behavior, one being that it seems to very easily cross with other beans. Almost every time I plant it by itself, I end up with some off-type vines.
It does climb to rarely over four feet or so and way more than any other bean I've ever seen it branches near the trunk. If the central vine grows to full size, beans harvested and the vine cut, it branches a whole bunch more and makes a second bigger crop, depending on weather. If the central stem is pinched back early on it branches a whole lot and still climbs but not very tall.
I don't have enough good evidence or documentation to say for sure, but it seems like if it crosses with a bush bean, it just makes a bush bean but if the father was a pole bean it makes a new Refugee type. I sometimes give them names like Escapee and Insurgent. I call my favorite one, Zealot.
It is my understanding that bush alleles are recessive to runner types.
Some people use the phenotype difference to hunt for crosses by growing a bush type and a runner together, if the bush seeds grow runner plants then introgression has occurred.
The determinate bush style phenotype is non-wild type and is a product of domestication, typically wild type alleles are dominant over it.
Some exceptions may occur but I am not aware of this yet.
My preferred bean varieties are French pole beans, such as Emerite and Fortex.
These are not runner beans, but common beans that will grow taller than humans if properly supported.
I suspect that common bean genes are similar to those of peas, with tall dominant over short.
In the context of my post, I was addressing the phrasing used by the original poster, wherein runner here is not being used to describe the species, but is rather being used to describe pole bean phenotypes.
This language is quite common in lay discussions, where with common beans, even the bush types, individual branches are described as "runners".
It should also be mentioned that half-runner beans are not hybrid or grex between Phaseolus coccineus and Phaseolus vulgaris, they are intermediate between pole and bush types.
Studies have shown some introgression from P. coccineus into some lines of P. vulgaris in antiquity, but generally speaking their F1 hybrids tend to suffer from vastly reduced fertility making the deliberate production of hybrid lines quite challenging.
But, for the context of the thread, runner here does not mean Phaseolus coccineus but rather refers to pole beans as mentioned in post #4 of this thread. This confusing terminology is extremely common unfortunately.
It is even more complicated by the fact that there are dwarf bush forms of Phaseolus coccineus in existence as that half-runner runner beans are a thing!
Yes you are right Cotyledon in what I was talking about. Unfortunately here in my part of down under your term pole bean is rarely if ever used and runner beans as in P. coccineus are not very common. I can easily understand any confusion that has arisen.
Quote from: whwoz on 2023-06-03, 09:51:59 PMUnfortunately here in my part of down under your term pole bean is rarely if ever used and runner beans as in P. coccineus are not very common. I can easily understand any confusion that has arisen.
I am growing P. coccineus for the first time this year and when I went to read up on the genus I thought that half runner beans meant half P coccineus for awhile. It took me reading of how vining branches of the bean plants are called runners for me to realize what was going on there.
Anyone know the loci and gene names for the alleles in question that pertain to the differences in growth? Have they been mapped and sequenced yet? You'd think beans would be well studied with the bioinformatics at this point but I don't know where to find that info.