From kandmhfarm@sprintmail.com Sat Jun 3 11:08:52 2000 Date: Fri, 2 Jun 00 20:23:17 -0500 From: kandmhfarm@sprintmail.com To: sanet-mg@cals.ncsu.edu Subject: Re:Edamame Re: Edamame It's true that tofu varieties can be used for edamame. We understand that China exports large amounts of frozen edamame that are hand picked from fields of tofu variety beans. Varieties grown in the the north like Vinton 81 are indeterminate and have beans in all stages of maturity on the stalk at the same time. You have a real advantage if they mature uniformly where you live. We understand that edamame varieties are determinate, giving a more concentrated harvest. Hand picking edamame is only possible in a place like China where there is a large very low paid labor supply. Varieties like Butterbean have been around for a long time, more than 30 years, and are usually sold as vegetable soybeans - they do not make good 'grain' type soybeans. They are low yielders and their pods tend to dehisce, or split open, when mature - this makes harvesting dry soybeans for feed/food or for seed very difficult. Butterbeans are reputed to have a somewhat better flavor when green, certainly a different, less starchy flavor with a higher sugar content. Butterbean seed is available from a number of American seed companies, such as Johnny's. There are new varieties that have been developed primarily in Japan that may have better quality, at least to the Asian palate. The best varieties have silver pubescence (hairs) on the pods and an even higher sugar content than Butterbean. We've been told that these newer varieties dehisce even more than Butterbeans, making them very difficult to produce seed from. Consequently, the seed prices are quite high. Seed from these newer varieties is imported from Japan and the varieties are patented. We understand there are edamame varieties that are better adapted to the southern/mid Atlantic US, but we are not familiar with them. There's a large edamame industry in Taiwan for processing, they must have varieties adapted to hotter climates, but initial seed would be very expensive. The Japanese are reported to plant edamame soybeans at lower field populations than we would ordinarily plant soybeans in the US. This allows better sunlight penetration to lower pods. Highest yields in American research are at 80 lb/seed per acre. We don't personally have enough experience to know what yield to expect from that seeding rate - we have just recently researched this information, looking at edamame as a possible processing vegetable. There are a couple of brands of frozen edamame available in the US, Snopac and Cascadian both market frozen edamame and they are really quite good to eat . The frozen edamame tasted much better than our own Vintons tasted when we tried cooking them young and in the pods, but we think the edamame were harvested younger than we harvested the Vintons - they seem much like lima beans that way, when young they have a sweet, crisp, non-starchy flavor (what they call lima beans fixed this way 'butterbeans' in North Carolina!), but when older, the starch flavor predominates. We really don't know what constitutes good edamame flavor though. However, if your customers like the flavor of Vinton picked as edamame and if your Vintons act as determinate plants (unlike in the north), you are fortunate - your seed cost will be less and your yields may be higher. There are several good resources available for more information on edamame. First, Dr. Carol Miles at Washington State University has been doing quite a lot of work on these and other Asian vegetables in a northern region. Since soybeans are highly day length sensitive, this may not be of as much value to growers further south, but could be a starting place. She has an extensive website that lists cultural information and seed sources. Also, the Asian Vegetable Resource Center in Taiwan has lots of information on varieties, cultural requirements, harvesting and marketing. They do not have a website, but can be reached over email at sundar@Netra.AVRDC.org.tw. Hope this helps someone out there! Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From kandmhfarm@sprintmail.com Sat Jun 3 14:11:15 2000 Date: Sat, 3 Jun 00 13:09:29 -0500 From: kandmhfarm@sprintmail.com To: sanet-mg@cals.ncsu.edu Subject: Re: Edamame RE: Edamame - We were asked for website references on edamame. Here are a few that seem useful. http://stratsoy.ag.uiuc.edu/~stratsoy/misc/edamame.html http://agsyst.wsu.edu/edamhome.htm http://agsyst.wsu.edu/edam.htm http://www.rirdc.gov.au/pub/handbook/edamame.html Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail