Plant Breeding Project
Beefy Resilient Grex Bean

Task
Stabilize plant breeder Carol Deppe's Beefy Resilient Grex dry bush bean.

Selection: Breeding for maximum diversity. 
Option: Breed for a color and/or trait (bush, half runner) 


Original Seed Stock

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The original seed stock of Beefy Resilient Grex bush dry bean that is used for this plant breeding project was gifted to us by Carol Deppe. It is a cross of Gaucho common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) X Black Mitla “tepary" (P. vulgaris/acutifolius). ​

A grex is a term that seed breeders are using to describe cross-pollinated varieties that have a great amount of genetic diversity, which is increasingly important as we have lost over 90% of the varieties that were commercially available 100 years ago. A grex can be the result of an intentional or unintentional cross of 2 or more varieties. The Beefy Resilient Grex Dry Bean was an unintentional cross that she noticed in her field. The offspring are not uniform in appearance. Breeders can have the intention to keep the expanded genetic diversity or use this grex as breeding material for new stable (come out like their parents) varieties.

Year 1 - Planted ​Spring 2017

Overview: Different plots were planted of the same color bean. Test plots included 10-15 beans of a the same color were planted. Below are photos of the offspring of the different test plots  (18-I or 2018- Gen. I). This first year all seeds were collected. No selection was made.

Offspring 2018 - Generation I 

Add Tan 18-I


Carol Deppe

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Carol Deppe is a traditional plant breeder. She holds a PhD in Genetics from Harvard University. She "specializes in developing open source crops for organic growing conditions, sustainable agriculture, and human survival for the next thousand years." She is a supporter and participant in the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), which includes breeders who are developing new varieties for the benefit of society that cannot be patented. She is the author of several books including Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties and Gardening for Resilience: Food Resilience and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times. 

Dr. Deppe is founder and owner of Fertile Valley Seeds. For seeds, articles, and further adventures, visit her website www.caroldeppe.com.

Beefy Resilient Grex Description

Here is the description from Carol Deppe's seed catalog:
BEEFY RESILIENT GREX bush dry bean. (Phaseolus vulgaris X P. vulgaris/acutifolius) OSSI-Pledged Variety. Bred for organics. Foundation Seed. Sole source of foundation grade seed of this variety. Sister* to Beef-Bush lines. Intense beefy flavor; tastes more like beef than beef does. Can substitute for beef or enhance rather than dilute the beef flavor in combinations of beef and beans. Pureed, makes a fantastic “beef” gravy. Plants are a mix of short vine and bush form. Short vines are held up off the ground, so the mix can be grown as bush beans. This is a segregating population of beans that represent the F6 and F7 of crosses between Gaucho common bean X Black Mitla “tepary.” (Note: Black Mitla has long been listed as a tepary, but its flower anatomy is intermediate between what is expected of P. vulgaris and P. acutifolius. I am guessing Black Mitla, an heirloom from Mexico and popular in the Southwest, actually resulted from a cross between the two species.) Gaucho, an Argentine heirloom, is a very early, very delicious richly flavorful gold dry bean. Black Mitla is a widely adapted bean with a powerful delicious flavor. Both are small beans round in cross section and about twice as long as wide. Both are easy to thresh. Teparies are unusually heat resistant and drought hardy, and are resistant or tolerant to diseases common beans succumb to. Common bean varieties tend to yield more. In 2009 I was trying to do seed increases on the pure varieties, which I grew only 12 feet apart; they shouldn't have crossed if they were different species. In 2010, when I grew out what I expected to be pure gold Gaucho, about 5% of the plants produced black seed. Figuring that whatever the exact species identity of the parents, the cross was immensely interesting, I hand-sorted out several thousand black seeds representing those crosses and planted them in 2011 to produce Resilient Bean Breeder F3. These turned out to be the most productive dry beans I have ever seen. When I cooked up a pot of the mixed colors, the flavor blew me away. The beans taste more beefy than beef does. When the mix of all colors of beans proved so delicious just as is, I renamed the material Beefy Resilient Grex. The 2016 population is F5s and F6s from the original crosses. The plants are a mix of short-vined bushes and true bushes, mostly the short-vined bush types. They all hold their pods up off the ground and can be handled like bush beans. To harvest I clip or pull plants and roll up the tangled row-shaped mat of beans. About ¾ of the beans are black; the rest are brown, tan, gold, or speckled. Maturity is a little later than Gaucho but still quite early. (Presumably there will be continuing segregation for plant type, maturity, drought resistance, disease resistance, and bean color and flavor.) I am selecting gently for earliness (by eliminating any plants that are not dry along with the main crop) but not selecting otherwise. I want this material to retain as much of its heterogeneity as possible so that it will be 10 10 maximally useful for others to breed from. Save seed from the plants that do best for you and breed your own unique varieties adapted to your own needs and conditions. Or just use as a mix, as I am. This should be particularly good material from which to select varieties for short-seasons, cool or cold or hot summer weather, drought hardiness, yield, and disease resistance. (To cook Beefy Resilients, I soak for 24 hours with adequate stirs and occasional water changes; soaking time is variable, but they all swell completely in that time.)