Aussie research into little-known bean boosts Timor-Leste food security

Published Jan 21, 2024

Tridge summary

Aussie researchers have been studying the winged bean, a little known but highly nutritious crop in southeast Asia, since the 1970s. University of Western Australia researchers Tanveer Khan and William Erskine have been working on developing new varieties of the winged bean, which has high protein content and can help address food security issues in Timor-Leste. Their work, supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, has led to the release of three new varieties of the winged bean in Timor-Leste, with one of the varieties being identified by Prof Erskine in the 1970s.

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Original content

Aussie research into a tropical pulse crop little known in Australia but a staple in south-east Asia is boosting food security in the region. University of Western Australia (UWA) Institute of Agriculture honorary research fellow Tanveer Khan, together with UWA adjunct professor William Erskine first started working on unlocking the potential of winged bean, known as dambala in Sri Lanka, dau rong in Vietnam and cigarilla in the Philippines, in the early 1970s. Dr Khan first began his work on the legume back in the 1970s at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, before Prof Erskine arrived as a tutor and began assisting the project, later carrying on the work for his PhD (registered at Cambridge University) when Dr Khan returned to Perth. International interest in the peculiarly shaped bean, notable for its frilly shape, was at a high after a report from 1975 described it as a 'supermarket on a stalk' because it combined the desirable nutritional characteristics of ...

Source: Farmweekly