Genetic research could help your favorite beans withstand climate change

Black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans … most of the beans you see in the grocery store today are varieties of a species known as the common bean.

And in many parts of the world, growing common beans is getting harder as climate change causes increasingly hot, dry weather.

So researchers have been studying another species called the tepary bean. Tepary beans are native to parts of the Sonoran Desert and grow well in hot, dry regions.

Urrea: "They are able to grow under drought and high heat conditions."

Carlos Urrea is a dry edible bean breeding specialist at the University of Nebraska. He and his team have been working to identify the genes that give tepary beans drought and heat tolerance as well as disease resistance. And they're working to breed these traits into common beans.

Urrea: "Now we are able to move genes from the tepary beans to the common beans."

His team has created new varieties that are being field-tested in drought-prone regions such as Nebraska, California, Puerto Rico, Uganda, and Tanzania.

He says these new varieties have the potential to help feed people who rely on beans as a critical food source and where food scarcity is a growing concern as the climate warms.