Curious Conversations, a research podcast

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Travis

What do you know about the mung bean?

To be honest, prior to working at Virginia Tech, I had never heard of this bean. But since I've been here, I've heard all about the impact that it's having across Senegal, Africa, thanks in large part to Virginia Tech's Ozzie Abaye. But despite the fact that I know that Ozzie has introduced us to countless farmers across Senegal and fed thousands of children as a result of it, I realized I still don't really know what a mung bean is, why it is such a good crop to grow in that climate, and what types of cool dishes can the mung bean be used to make?

Thankfully Ozzy was kind enough to join me to answer all of those questions and a whole lot more. Ozzy is a professor of agronomy at Virginia Tech's School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, and much of her work lies at the intersection of research and outreach. Ozzy shared a little bit about why she selected the mung bean to introduce to the farmers in Senegal, as well as what that process was like, the challenges of developing recipes for people in a different culture, and the heartfelt nickname her work has earned her along the way.

I'm Travis Williams and this is Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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Well, I know you have done just a ton of work in Senegal with the mung bean. And so I guess you've been doing this for 13 years. You've been going around and you've been, I guess, introducing this bean to different communities there. So I guess I'm curious right from the beginning, what is a mung bean?

Ozzie

A mung bean is a food legume. It's a warm season legume. It's just closely related to cow pee. And it is extremely versatile in terms of that adaptation, wide range of adaptation, temperature, soil conditions, water use. And so it is actually an excellent for legume.

Travis

Yeah, what does it look like?

Ozzie

It's green. It's actually called green mung bean or green gram. It is green mostly, but it's actually, it's just the seed coat is green and then the inside is yellow, but it also comes in various colors. We are in the process of releasing varieties that not green, but also black and yellow. It's in the U .S., I just want to say that in the U .S., I think 70 to 80 % of monkey bean is used for sprouts. So this is sprout that you see in a salad bar or in Chinese restaurant, know, long sprout. Those sprouts are mung bean sprouts. wow.

Travis

So probably a lot of people have eaten these and they didn't even realize that was what they're reading.

Ozzie

Yeah, probably.

Travis

Well, how did you go about deciding that this was the best bean to introduce to different communities?

Ozzie

That's a very interesting question. First, that, you know, I entered the country, Senegal in 2010 through a project funded through USAID funded project, USAID era, research education in agriculture. that was eight year actually, was five year, but it ended up eight year project managed by the Center for International Research, Education and Development, that time it was called ORED. Their overall project was to revitalize Senegal's private and public agriculture sector. So I have some role in that. And I was very grateful for that. I had several graduate students fund this project. And one of the students said, really wanted to do conservation agriculture for his research project. The conservation agriculture promote the maintenance of permanent soil cover. These are just three principles, minimum soil disturbance and diversification of species. That's really where we thought that we can actually explore another food legume for West Africa, because it is a copy country basically. They produce a lot of coffee, produce in abundance and also that well -adapted, well -loved food legumes. So, know, the dependency on single crop really never really good. So we thought that through that project research, we can diversify the cropping system by adding one more legume, food legume. Then we don't really know where to start in a way. So we start looking for any kind of food legume that is closely related to cowpea. So that's how we came up with mung bean. And we introduced mung bean that way. And for many reasons, because although that mung bean has a wide range of adaptation right now, we are growing mung bean at Blacksburg, Virginia, very wide range of adaptation. It does very well on droughty soils. It does well with relatively less moisture and water. Water use efficiency is very high. And temperature can resist on temperature. Yesterday that I found out up to 45 degrees Celsius, which is 113 degrees Fahrenheit. So it has tremendous amount of that quotation, you know, we found out. that's how we introduced mung bean. And we were actually very pleased with that.

Travis

Yeah. How did you go about introducing it to the farmers there? Was it a tough sell?

Ozzy

No, that was really the thing. know, it's just like, it's very interesting because I am an agronomist, you know, I just think about crop and soil, you know, and I Honestly, that when we went to the villages, we told them what we would be doing and then we just put mung bean seeds in their hands, you know, and said, this is the crop that we would introduce. What do you think, you know? And they really got excited. They were looking at it and looking at it. They were very excited. They said that we'll try it. So that's how it started. I really always say that we just got lucky because the choice of food, introduction of food can be very, very difficult. But in this case, this means proximity and to copy. Also that we made it clear that we are not introducing mug beans to replace coffee. We want to to complement a cow pea to be an additional crop to cow pea, not in the state of that. That was a very important distinction to make. And so they did like it immediately, and they said they would be willing to try it and grow it. So that's what happened. And then we got permission from Senegal government to bring seeds from.

from the US and this is one particular variety Birken directly we got it from Oklahoma.

Travis

And so how many different areas or communities or maybe a better question is how do you quantify how many different folks are now growing mung bean?

Ozzie

Initially we actually tried various part of Senegal through that project. We started about 2012 through the USCID era project. They were, we went by regions and we were able to introduce it to several villages, basically really throughout kind of Senegal, but the actual production and the successful successful use of mung bean did not start until 2018. I had this great opportunity to work with this NGO called Counterpart International. They are heavily involved in Food for Education program, which is a school feeding program. And so they heard about the mung bean story at Virginia Tech, and they contacted me and said that, well, We are trying to get our funds through USDA, McGovern -Dole Food for Education Program. We would like to monkey bean for school feeding program. Would you be interested? Of course, I kind of jump up and down. Of course I am. And so that was 2018 and 2019. We, had, they said I can try it and 10 communities. this is in St. Louis region of Senegal, which is really very dry, maybe maximum 10, 12 inches of rain a year. And so it has to be grown under irrigation. And so that is like 10 schools, 10 communities and start introducing it to those 10 communities and start growing it. And so the deal is that we'll give them the seeds and we'll provide the agronomic trainings how to grow it. And then once they produce a mung bean, they will give 25 % of the mung bean to the school feeding programs. There were about four, at least, private farmers, women farmer organizations community gardens and also school gardens. The end of that, well of course that COVID came and interrupted some of it and by the end of 2022, we fed over 4 ,000 kids with mung bean and also trained over 1 ,000 farmers in 10 villages. That was the phase one of that project. Now, This is the second year, the third year. We have a new project, the same mung bean project, but now I have 29 schools and 39 farms or parcels rather. And we are using about again, four venues. We have women organizations, private farmers and community gardens and school gardens. So I have now almost like 6 ,000 kids and elementary school kids and 29 communities. So the farmers, of course, are to be probably in thousands.

Travis

Wow. So you have about 6 ,000 kids right now that are being fed through your program?

Ozzie

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that right now, this year, It was the first year and you know the climate in the southern part of Senegal in the Kazimans, it's very, you know, they get a lot of rain. Mugabeen actually does not like too much water, does not like standing in too much water, so we actually have to find...a time like an appropriate time of the year to grow it, like not in the middle of the rainy season, but maybe towards the end of the rainy season, because one of the attribute of mung bean that the farmers like, it is a short cycle crop. It is like about 50, 55 days from planting to harvest. So that is a tremendous value to them because one, they don't have to commit to this crop for a longer period of time. Two, there is what's called hunger period. The hunger period is the period between seeding and harvest, usually that the quality and the quantity of food at a household level is not much. So if you are growing a crop that you plant and then mature and produce and all that within a short period of time, that actually reduce that hunger period. And one of the farmers say that mung bean is hunger fighter. And of course that mung bean has also a lot of great nutritional value, high protein, high iron and folate. And so those are also the attributes of mung bean.

Travis

Less than less than two months to grow a crop. That's tremendously fast.

Ozzie

And right now we are, know, as I say to you, am in Benin, Benin, the West Africa, another West African country. came here to work with the World Vegetable Center, West Africa, Central Africa Division. They actually, the agreement that we had with them is that they would They will share with us 15 lines of mung bean. Some of them, said from planting to harvest would be 45 days.

Travis

wow. So it's going to get even faster.

Ozzie

Yes, exactly. So we are really excited. And now we got permission from Senegal government to take the mung bean lines from Senegal, I mean, from Benin to Senegal. So. It's going to be very exciting.

Travis

I'm curious and you kind of mentioned some of this, that some of this was to feed people. Is this also a crop that folks have been able to sell to other people?

Ozzie

Not yet, because we haven't, you know, the the mung bean seeds so far that we have been taking it from the from the US, strictly for consumption, household consumption and school feeding programs. But By the end of this year, through the university at Senegal, Garçon Berger University, we will be releasing mung bean varieties, four of them. And so then we will start focusing on, of course, marketing and all that.

Travis

Well, have you, as you've been going through this journey with this bean, have you found or developed any sort of interesting recipes for how people can eat mung bean? mean, aside from the sprouts that you mentioned at the salad bar earlier, I'm just kind of curious what it looks like to eat this vegetable.

Ozzie

I think that these beans, even in the US, I think people are eating a lot of mung bean now. You can make soups now whatever you do with lentils in a way, you can substitute mung bean, but this is what is really very interesting. And once the farmers start producing mung bean, and I kept asking, are you eating it? How do you like the taste? And then I found out that they have been waiting for me to provide the recipes, not necessarily the recipes, but to teach them how to cook. So I was like, why? recipe user. mean, I use lots of recipes and I teach a course at Virginia Tech, World Crops and Cropping System, where we actually cook. I love to cook, but developing recipes, that is a totally different story, you know? And so I'm kind of like a little bit worried because when you are developing recipes, you really have to know their preferences and also the ingredients, what do they have in terms of ingredients. And the first recipe I took, I didn't really develop necessarily. was a mung bean hummus, just basically substitute instead of chickpea, I use mung bean and took it to the villages, the recipe and very few ingredients, the mung bean soaked and then cooked and lemon juice oil, salt and pepper, and what is garlic? Of course they all like. And so that was very easy. And then immediately the pressure was on me to actually develop more recipes. And then I start roaming around the markets, you know, I start like, what do they have? What does they eat? You know, food is cultural and how do they eat all those things? And so I start going through the markets. Every market I come across start documenting ingredients, you know. And so I come home and Virginia, the Blacksburg and I start cooking those mung bean and try the recipes, you know. And so we have developed so far at least 30 recipes and we have tried quite a few of them. But again, when you are trying all these recipes, you also have to consider what kind of tools do they have to cook it. It's really much, much more complex to develop recipes and growing the mung bean itself. But we have recipes and then the recipes we introduced and they were making the recipes again through this process we found that a lot of the women that we work with, the ones that prepare meals for the school, the school's literacy issues and they don't necessarily read or write. So they were just looking at the pictures and local facilitators were reading it for them. So that was...was not really necessarily a challenge, that provided opportunity how to present these recipes to them. So we got a grant through Virginia Tech, ECTAS, and ICAT to work with Virginia State to develop recipes that are totally animated, look and cook. So we introduced those animated recipes this last week, it went very well. After they saw the video, we basically gave them the ingredients and then let them go. And it was a success.

Travis

It sounds like a couple of different fields that you ended up kind of into that you didn't necessarily expect.

Ozzie

Totally not. mean, developing recipes are very, really, really challenging. You really have to understand the communities and their food culture. just don't develop recipes just like that. was a bit, I learned a lot about the communities through that.

Travis

Absolutely. Did you find, is there a certain recipe that has become like your favorite?

Ozzie

They like the mung bean hummus and they also like the mung bean tomato stew. They also, they have tremendous amount of fruits like mango season. It seems like everyone really has at least two, three mango trees, you know. So it's everywhere. Beautiful mangoes. The mangoes just melt in your mouth. And so we also developed a mung bean mango salad and a watermelon mung bean salad.

Travis

Yeah. Well, I guess having done this now for several years and kind of going on this journey, what is it like to now have, I guess, have the reputation as the Mung Bean lady?

Ozzie

Well, they call me Madam Hmongobin. That's what they call me. This is tremendous honor, you know, to be trusted. You go to these villages, they trust you, you know, and they want you to come back in force.

It almost feels like to me, almost one of the, colleagues said, it's like a national holiday when I entered the villages because that trust is built now, you know? And I look at it as a privilege to be able to use my training and my education both at Virginia Tech to do this. And this is not really done just me, Virginia Cooperative Extension is involved in this. And I also have a colleague who is Erica Barnett and who has introduced curriculum around the mung bean and curriculum lessons. So I am really leading the program, but I have so many help from the university community to do this.

Travis

Thanks to Ozzie for sharing her expertise related to the mung bean and the work she is doing in Senegal, Africa. If you or someone you know would make for a great curious conversation, email me at traviskw at vt .edu. I'm Travis Williams and this has been Virginia Tech's Curious Conversations.

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