The pan of beans on my cooker have taken a long time to prepare. It’s not just because I soaked them overnight and have now simmered them for about an hour: more than 12 years has gone into the creation and production of these beans. After all that, they had better taste delicious.
These beans are the creation of Prof Eric Holub, a geneticist and researcher at the University of Warwick, who has spent more than a decade developing three new varieties of beans, engineered to be grown in the UK.
The three varieties of UK Registered Beans, or URBeans, are named Olivia, Godiva and Capulet, inspired by the Warwickshire region. They are the offspring of previous work by Holub, who has also developed rot-resistant alfalfa. He used mechanical pollination, by which pollen is transferred between two parent plants to create genetically optimised offspring.
It might sound a bit sci-fi, but Holub assures me that these aren’t frightening beans. “There was nothing novel about the technology we used for this initiative, it’s been used for hundreds of years. It’s conventional breeding and genetics,” he said. “The key thing was what we were aiming for: a better bean.”
Olivia, Godiva and Capulet can germinate fast and in cold soils, they have strong root systems and are suitable for planting in May and harvest in September – before the autumn rain sets in. They are also tall enough for a combine harvester to cut them down and harvest the seed pods. Capulet beans are small and white, perfect for beans on toast. Godiva is blonde and a little larger, and the Olivia beans are black.
The next step after development was scaling up. A Warwickshire initiative, Nurtural Food, was launched to bring together local farmers, retailers and the bean makers, and the zero-waste Zero Store in Warwickshire agreed to stock the beans to see how they went down. They have been on the shelves for a year now, and Zero has recently transitioned to selling a new mixture of Olivia and Godiva.
It helps that interest in beans is on the rise. “When we started this project, the timing wasn’t really right for these bean varieties,” said Holub. “The government was investing in a programme to produce alternative proteins, but that was really driven by a need to replace soybeans for animal food. The Eat-Lancet report recommending a shift to plant-based diets was years away, and knowledge about beans was stuck at beans on toast.”
Now 23.4% of Britons consider themselves flexitarians while the focus on ultra-processed foods has made consumers more conscious about the contents of their “healthy” food and encouraged greater mindfulness about how food gets to our plates.
And in case you hadn’t noticed, beans are cool these days. If you go to any specialty grocery store or even most supermarkets, part of the legume shelf will be occupied by big glass jars of beans, adorned with trendily designed labels. Meanwhile, influencers are going viral for their bean-based meal ideas such as the dense bean salad, a recipe formula that sparked headlines online and off.
“More people are cooking from scratch, whether to save money or for pleasure or relaxation. All that means that consumer knowledge is changing,” Holub said. “Now if you look at a can of beans it will tell you about the protein and fibre content, that they’re low fat. The way we think about fibre particularly has changed – people are very interested in gut health.” From a climate-conscious perspective, many are also keen to source their ingredients from local, or at least UK, producers.
Affordability was a key factor when the beans were in the early development stage. “There has to be a short supply chain,” Holub said. “Adding parties in the middle makes it more expensive for the consumer and means the farmer probably doesn’t get enough to be able to afford to grow the beans.”
Obviously, the most important measure of success for the beans is how they taste. And they taste good. The mixture of Olivia and Godiva has an unexpected depth of flavour, a Pinto-esque nuttiness that worked well with the smoky tomato, lemon and garlic sauce I put together, and I felt strangely accomplished having made the beans as from-scratch as I could.
It sounds a bit hippy, but really understanding where these little legumes came from and how they made it to my plate did add to the enjoyment of the meal. Although nationwide accessibility is a while off, the work of Holub and his team is an encouraging sign of British agricultural innovation.
“The story isn’t just about beans on toast any more,” Holub said. “We’re creating a better bean for better meals, healthier communities, and a healthier nation.”
