Moon Cake is named for an annual Chinese harvest festival
during which people eat sweet cakes, often made partly with lotus or
sesame seed and bean paste and generally shaped like the full moon the
festival celebrates. People gather spontaneously in parks and on beaches,
carrying candle lanterns, and watch the moon, which is said to be at
its fullest and most beautiful in mid-autumn. The festival is held sometime
in August or September. Festival-goers make a wish, since the "Man
in the Moon" is a matchmaker in Chinese legends.
Geneticist Thomas E. Devine, with the Agricultural
Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, developed this vegetable
giant. He named it Moon Cake to recognize the oriental roots of soybeans,
as well as to associate the new soybean with the tasty foods eaten at
the festival.
"Soybeans have been a major protein source in places
like China, Japan, and Korea for centuries," he says. "The
large-seed edamame are eaten like green peas. You just boil them and
press the beans out of the pod with your fingers. You can then add them
to everything from salads to succotash, including mixed vegetables,
soups, stir-fried vegetables, and casseroles."
Moon Cake is the latest in a series of giant soybean plants
Devine developed for release by ARS. "Its tall growth should make
it especially valuable to organic farmers because it will help it shade
out weeds," he says. "That's helpful for farmers who have
to control weeds without using pesticides. For farmers who sell only
the pods, after harvest the leaves and stems can be left as high-protein
forage for livestocklike sheep or goats. That makes it a dual-use
crop."
Devine bred the new variety from breeding stock he developed
for three giant soybean varieties intended for forage: Donegal, Derry,
and Tyrone. Soybeans are mainly used as a grain for livestock feed and
human foods and, to a lesser extent, as a vegetable bean. Even less
is used for foragecurrently only 3 percent of soybeans grown in
the United States.
The vegetable soybean is just as tall as the giant forage
varieties. At 5 to 6 feet tall, it is almost double the usual height
of soybeans. All the giant varieties were conventionally selected and
bred for height and strong stems that are less likely to fall to the
ground. "We did not use genetic engineering on any of the soybean
varieties we developed," Devine says.
Because of their height, all giant soybean plants leave
more crop residue and provide better protection from soil erosion than
conventional soybeans. Soybeans are generally known as plants that are
hard on soils because they usually don't leave enough residue to cover
soil adequately.
Another advantage: "Moon Cake matures later than
most vegetable soybeans, after the others have gone to market,"
Devine says. "This extends the growing season for farmers."
Devine received the ARS 2001 Technology Transfer award
for pioneering the reintroduction of soybean as a forage crop. He has
spent the past 20 years developing these giant varieties. He not only
cooperates with other research and extension scientists around the country
in evaluating the experimental lines, but also follows through by certifying
the varieties under the Plant Variety Protection Act, an important step
before licensing can occur. Then he gives technical guidance to the
seed companies that license the exclusive rights to market them.
Moon Cake has been tested at ARS locations in Beltsville,
West Lafayette, Indiana, and Jackson, Tennessee. It has also been tested
by Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia. Companies seeking
licenses granting rights for its production and sale are invited to
apply.By Don
Comis, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Integrated Farming Systems,
an ARS National Program (#207) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Thomas E.
Devine is at the USDA-ARS Sustainable
Agricultural Systems Laboratory, 10300 Baltimore Ave., Bldg. 001,
Room 126, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350; phone (301) 504-6375, fax (301)
504-6491.
"Moon Cake, Anyone?" was published in the September
2003 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
|