Mung bean and Morphology

Mung bean (Vigna radiata), also known as mung bean, maash (Persian: ماش٫ Kurdish: ماش)٫ mūng[2] (Hindi: मूंग), monggo or munggo (Philippines), is a member of the legume family Mung beans are mainly grown in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.It is used as an ingredient in both savory and sweet dishes.

Describe

Mung beans are an annual vine with yellow flowers and hairy brown pods.The English word mung is derived from the Hindi word mūṅg (मूंग), from the Sanskrit word mudga.

Morphology 

Mung beans (Vigna radiata) are legumes, also known as mung beans.It is sometimes confused with black beans (Vigna mungo) due to their morphological similarities, although they are two different species.The mung bean is an annual vine with yellow flowers and hairy brown pods.There are three subpopulations of Vigna radiata, including one cultivated subpopulation (Vigna radiata subsp.radiata) and two wild subpopulations (Vigna radiata subsp. Sublobata and Vigna radiata subsp. glabra). Its height is about 15-125 cm.Mung beans have a well-developed root system.The lateral roots are numerous and slender, with root nodules.Stems much branched, sometimes twining at apex.The young stems are purple or green, and the mature stems are grayish yellow or brown.It can be divided into erect cluster type, semi-tail type and tail type.Wild types tend to prostrate, while cultivated types are more erect.The leaves are ovate or broadly ovate, the cotyledon dies after emergence, and three leaves are produced on two single leaves.The leaves are 6-12 cm long and 5-10 cm wide. Racemes of yellow flowers in leaf axils and leaf tips, 10-25 flowers per pedicel, self-pollinated.The fruits are elongated cylindrical or flattened cylindrical pods, usually 30-50 per plant.The pods are 5-10 cm long and 0.4-0.6 cm wide, contain 12-14 septate-separated seeds, are green, yellow, brown, or blue in color, and may be cylindrical or spherical.Seed color and the presence or absence of a rough layer are used to distinguish different types of mung beans.

Growth stages

Germination is usually within 4-5 days, but actual germination rates vary depending on the amount of moisture introduced during the germination stage.It is leafy, with stems and cotyledons emerging from the seedbed.After germination, the seeds split open to produce soft white roots.Mung bean sprouts are harvested at this stage.If left unharvested, it develops a root system and then a green stem containing two leaves grows out of the soil. After that, seed pods start to form on its branches, each pod contains 10-15 seeds.Ripening may take up to 60 days. Once mature, it can grow up to 30 inches (76 cm) tall with multiple branches bearing seed pods. Most seed pods darken while some remain green.

Nitrogen fixation and cover crop

As a legume, mung beans live in symbiosis with rhizobium bacteria, which enable them to fix atmospheric nitrogen (58-109 kg per hectare of mung beans). It can provide soil with high amounts of biomass (7.16 tonnes of biomass/ha) and nitrogen (ranging from 30 to 251 kg/ha).The ability to fix nitrogen not only enables it to meet its own nitrogen requirements, but also benefits subsequent crops.Can be used as a cover crop before and after cereal rotations and as a good green manure.

Taxonomy

Mung beans were one of many species of the Phaseolus genus transferred to Vigna in the 1970s.Previously known as Phaseolus aureus or P. radiatus.

Cultivation

Variety

The current mung bean varieties are mainly resistant to diseases and insect pests, especially bean weevil and mung bean yellow mosaic virus (MYMV).At present, the main varieties include Samrat, IPM2-3, SML 668 and Meha from India; Crystal, Jade-AU,Celera-AU, Satin II, and Regur from Australia; No. 4, Weilv No. 4, Jihong 9218, Jihong 8937, Bao 876-16, and Bao 8824-17 are in China. In addition, the properties of mung beans have been significantly improved with the help of the World Vegetable Center.Summer Moon' is a short-growing mung bean legume crop grown in northern India.Due to its short duration, it adapts well to many planting systems. It is mainly grown in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.It is considered the most hardy of all legume crops, requiring hot climates to germinate and grow.

Climate and soil requirements

Mung beans are warm season and frost intolerant plants. Mung beans are suitable for planting in temperate, subtropical and tropical regions.The most suitable temperature for mung bean germination and growth is 15-18°C.Mung beans are very adaptable to various soil types, and the optimum pH of the soil is between 6.2-7.2. Mung bean is a short-day plant, long days will delay its flowering and pod setting.

Harvest

The yield potential of mung beans is around 2.5 to 3.0 t/ha, but usually due to resistance to environmental stress and poor management, the average productivity of mung beans is only 0.5 t/ha. Due to the irregular flowering habit of mung bean, under suitable environmental conditions, a mung bean has both flowers and pods, which brings difficulties to the harvest of mung bean.The perfect harvest stage is when 90% of the pods in a production are black in color.Mung beans can be harvested with a harvester.It is important to set headers in case of overthreshing.