What is it about?
The lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.), also known as butter bean, sieva bean, sugar bean, Madagascar bean, Java bean, is native to South America and is found in the tropical areas of the Earth. It is cultivated in Cameroon mainly for human and animal nutrition because of its rich protein content. Additionally, the crop has some medicinal properties; indeed, seeds are used as a drug against fever, headache, otitis, diabetes, wounds, abscesses, etc. However, despite its multiple uses and virtues, the crop has remained neglected and underuse compared to other leguminous crops such as common beans, groundnut, soybean and cowpea. Hence, the objective of this work was to evaluate the potential uses and the available genetic resources of lima bean.
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Why is it important?
Lima bean offers good prospects in African tropics owing to their important returns potential, deep root system, and water deficit tolerance. Considerable progress has been made in its genetic improvement breeding, but a lot stays to be done in several parts of the tropical areas, especially in developing more steady and productive varieties for the moisture.
Perspectives
For the promotion and vulgarization of lima bean, new breeding approaches should be quickly adopted to obtain new climate-smart varieties with high resistance to emerging biotic and abiotic stresses. Most of the natural sites of wild populations are being affected by an accelerated change in land use due to population pressure and agricultural intensification. It is therefore paramount to carry out both ex-situ and in situ conservation of the genetic resources.
Dr Carine TEMEGNE NONO
University of Yaounde I
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Lima bean, January 2021, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-821450-3.00001-9.
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