PAN 123: South Africa’s top canning bean variety

There are some tasty reasons why this bean variety from Pannar dominates the canning market, says Dr Antony Jarvie of Podsquad, an independent consultant to Corteva™ Agriscience.

PAN 123 is a small white canning bean that entered the commercial market in 2010 and has steadily come to dominate the sector. The farmers who grow the bean and the canning companies that process it value this cultivar highly for its high quality and excellent yield.

Development

PAN 123 has taken over the mantle of the well-known Teebus bean variety, developed in the early 1980s. Teebus became the foundation on which South Africa’s canning market developed, and processing was based on its characteristics. But while canners remained satisfied with the variety, farmers increasingly required
improvements in yield to compete with other crops in rotation. PAN 123 was developed in the mould of Teebus specifically to meet this need; bred to improve yield significantly, it did not stray too far from Teebus’s culinary qualities. Moisture uptake, commonly measured as hydration ratio, is one of the elements that determines canning yield. The more water a bean absorbs in the canning process, the fewer beans it takes to fill a can. There is a delicate balance, however, between canning yield and bean quality, as very high moisture uptake is associated with poor culinary quality. Beans need to absorb moisture while remaining intact; in other words, they should not become mushy in the cooking process or leach starches into the sauce, causing it to congeal into clumps. PAN 123 produces a consistentquality canning product, where the individual beans remain intact in the sauce and have a firm mouthfeel.

Resistance

Farmers are particularly attracted to the variety for its yield and agronomic attributes. PAN 123 contains a rust-resistant gene-block that has shown good resistance to rust strains across the world. Canning beans generally have a far longer commercial life than dry grain types because of the time and effort required to optimise canning factory output. For this reason, broad resistance is an important consideration for cultivar longevity. Selecting for high rust resistance has also resulted in better grain size stability; this is an important advantage, as variability in grain size causes problems in the canning process, the most serious of which is hard-seededness associated with the smallergrained fraction of the crop. Rust-susceptible varieties frequently run out of applied fungicide protection at the end of the season, as farmers cannot respray too close to maturity, and late infection can lead to variation in grain size, as well as reduced yield. This is not the only cause of grain size variation, but it is one that can be controlled by variety choice.

Taste it
Whether you’re a farmer or a consumer, take a good look at the integrity of baked beans next time you eat them, and appreciate their texture and the consistency of the sauce. If the beans are locally produced, there is a very high likelihood they are PAN 123.