- ‘supermarket

Tradewinds

PNG’s winged bean - ‘supermarket on a stalk’

".all it Seguidillas as the botanists do; call it *winged bean ’ as English-speaking layfolk do; call it as bin (‘arse bean \ because the iber at the bottom of the plant is so highly prized) as pidgin leakers in the Papua New Guinea Highlands do. Call it what you ill, a climbing bean plant, native to PNG and some Southeast sian countries, is looming large in the news of the world war gainst hunger. PIM staff writer Malcolm Salmon reports.

he ‘winged bean’ of Papua lew Guinea’s Highlands is eing heavily promoted in the ;arch for a readily available aily protein supplement to the ational diet, according to ilian Lambert, who is leaving NG after five years’ service as atritional planner at the ational Planning Office in art Moresby.

Interviewed by PIM during a ily visit to Sydney, Mr Lam jrt said the winged bean, pre ously only grown in the ighlands, was now common

school gardens throughout

e country. Recently, for the st time in his experience, he id seen it on sale in Port

oresby markets.

The University of Papua ew Guinea is acting as the ain centre of research and is nding out seeds and planting aterials for use all over the untry.

Mr Lambert sketched in the ckground to the PNG pro in problem as follows: ‘Although in general the arid protein gap was to the refront of nutritionists’ inds in the sixties, it is not

•w seen as being as important

it was. This is due largely to s fact that the Food and

piculture Organisation

wngraded it in a decision ten in the early seventies. ‘Their thinking was based gely on consideration of the ablems of countries whose pies are cereal crops, and )k into account the fact that reals have an average protein ntent of 6% to 7%. ‘But in the Pacific the staples j root crops, with an average 3tein content much lower m that of cereals. Sweet tato, for example, has only out 1.5%. So the need for a

daily protein supplement in the diet of Pacific peoples is as pressing as ever. ‘lt’s true that pigs are kept

throughout the PNG High

lands. But they’re no answer.

The people eat pig meat only

once every two or three months the protein is mostly con sumed .right away as energy, and not stored in the body on a continuing basis. ‘ln fact all sorts of meat suf fer the disadvantage that they can’t be kept in the circum stances of the ordinary PNG village. Kill a pig or a cow and it must be eaten right away be fore the meat goes off. ‘Milk appears to be out too there have been several attempts to keep dairy cattle in PNG, but they’ve been unsuc cessful. ‘Poultry schemes haven’t

prospered either. The village

chicken is a poor egg-producer, mainly because it lives only on what scraps it can find, and is not fed on a systematic basis.

There’s practically no poultry

feed produced in PNG. In fact, it’s cheaper to import chickens than poultry feed. ‘So you’re really left with vegetable crops, such as the

winged bean. A key problem

here is to persuade people to grow them all the year round to space and plan the crop

ping. At present they’re mainly

grown seasonally. What we must aim for is to guarantee a continuous supply of the beans so that people have daily pro tein supplement, not a glut of beans every three or four months and a shortage the rest of the time.

‘Agronomically, the winged

bean seems just about ideal for PNG. It can be grown any where from sea level to about 2000 metres up and that covers about 95% of the country’s population.’

While Mr Lambert sees a bright future for the winged bean in the country of his most recent interest, an American nutritionist, Noel Vietmayer, has written of it as likely to take off and wing its way to world stardom in the battle against

hunger.

Writing in the Australian magazine The Bulletin in July he said that the bean had long lain ‘ostracised behind a cul tural fence... it was con

sidered merely a “poor

person’s crop”, as if that made it unfit for the rest of human kind’. ‘But,’ he added, ‘discoveries of the past three years are changing all that. Today, many normally cautious scientists are elated over this bean’s poten tial.’

Vietmeyer outlined the

‘tragic paradox’ that the

world’s premier protein plant,

the soya bean, grows poorly in the tropics, where the nu tritional need for it is greatest. ‘lt is in the torrid countries that malnutrition is greatest. It is there that children’s minds and

bodies are impoverished by

high-starch, low-protein diets,’

he wrote.

Here is where the winged bean comes in, he said. ‘Trop ical climates fit it like a glove.’

The plant has been described as a ‘supermarket on a stalk’, because all of it can go into the pot. Professor Theodore Hymowitz, one of a score of American researchers now developing the winged bean as a crop, has another simile: ‘lt’s like an ice-cream cone,’ he says. ‘You can eat the whole

thing.’

The climbing plant, which,

displaying tremendous vigour,

reaches heights up to five metres if the staking or trellis ing is tall enough, offers six quite different types of food: • The four-sided pod which, with its distinctive flanges (or ‘wings’) may be green like snow peas, purple or red. It can grow as long as a man’s fore arm, and, according to Viet meyer, ‘taste like chewy green beans’; • ‘Spinach’ from the spade shaped leaves which are extremely rich in Vitamin A, the want of which blinds thou sands of children every year in

tropical countries;

• ‘Asparagus’, from the juicy tendrils of the plant; • ‘Mushrooms’, from the nectar-rich flowers which, when steamed make a garnish with the texture and colouring of mushrooms; • The roots. Vietmeyer wrote: ‘Cultivated correctly, the roots of some varieties swell into tiny tubers. They are firm and ivory-white inside and have a delicate nutty flavour .. .

Highland tribesmen in New Guinea esteem them so much

The winged wonder ... pod, leaves, flowers and tuber, all edible.

that they hold winged bean sing-sings at harvest time.’ • The seeds. On these Viet meyer waxed most lyrical of all, writing: ‘But despite the tastiness and food value of the pods, leaves, tendrils, flowers and tubers, it is actually winged bean seeds that have got scien

tists jumping the highest. The

seeds are so rich in protein and

edible oil that they duplicate

soya beans. The nutritional yalue of the two beans is about the same, and in Ghana and the Ivory Coast teams of Czech, Ghanaian and Swiss icientists have demonstrated hat winged bean soups and

purees provide the nutrients

teeded to make young brains

md bodies develop normally.

The protein that pervades he winged bean comes from in amazing source: air! No lules on winged bean roots louse bacteria that convert the fir’s most abundant constitu

ent, nitrogen gas, into

immonia. In return for a cosy lome in a nodule, the bacteria idp the plant to grow, for mmonia is one of the best fer

ilisers known. The grateful

>lant converts the ammonia

ato protein.’

In the Philippines and ndonesia, the winged bean is ow a target crop for nation

ride development. Winged

cans are also on sale in lonolulu and Western Samoa, laces where they were un nown a couple of years ago.

Vietmeyer mused over the roblem of why such ‘a mir

culous plant’ could be so long

eglected on a world scale. ‘Ac ially,’ he wrote, ‘plant scien

sts aren’t surprised. The

ow-cherished soya bean was a oor man’s crop itself, until re ;ntly. Americans, for sample, spurned it for more lan a century after Ben ranklin introduced it to them, dvocates of soya bean were

msidered crackpots. Only in

le 1920 s did co-ordinated re gard! shatter the shell of dis imination . . .’ Soya bean is ow among the world’s top 20

>od crops.

A distinguished panel of the S National Academy of Sci

ices investigated the winged

-an in 1975 and concluded lat it, too, had the potential to jcome a global resource.