Know your Lupini bean

Know your Lupini beans - History and distribution

• • These legumes were popular with the Romans and they spread their cultivation throughout the Roman Empire.

  • Today, Lupini are most commonly found in Mediterranean countries and their former American colonies, especially in Portugal, Italy, Brazil, as well as Egypt (where it is part of Sham El Nessim holiday meals), Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Turkey , Chicago's Little Italy and in New York City's Spanish Harlem, where it is popularly served with beer.

  • The Andean American variety of this bean, Lupinus mutabilis, was a food widespread during the Incan Empire.

  • Lupins were also used by Native Americans in North America, e.g. the Yavapai people.

Know your Lupini beans - Varieties of bean

• • The Andean Lupin L. mutabilis, the Mediterranean L. albus (White Lupin), L. angustifolius (Blue Lupin) and Lupinus hirsutus are only edible after soaking the seeds for some days in salted water.

  • These lupins are referred to as sweet lupins because they contain smaller amounts of toxic alkaloids than the bitter lupin varieties.

  • Newly bred variants of sweet lupins are grown extensively in Germany; they lack any bitter taste and require no soaking in salt solution.

  • The seeds are used for different foods from vegan sausages to lupin-tofu or baking-enhancing lupin flour.

  • Given that lupin seeds have the full range of essential amino acids and that they, contrary to soya, can be grown in more temperate to cool climates, lupins are becoming increasingly recognized as a cash crop alternative to soya.

  • Three Mediterranean species of lupin, Blue Lupin, White Lupin and Yellow Lupin (L. luteus) are widely cultivated for livestock and poultry feed.

  • Both sweet and bitter lupins in feed can cause livestock poisoning.

  • Lupin poisoning is a nervous syndrome caused by alkaloids in bitter lupins, similar to neurolathyrism.

  • Mycotoxic lupinosis is a disease caused by lupin material that is infected with the fungus Diaporthe toxica; the fungus produces mycotoxins called phomopsins, which cause liver damage.

  • Lupins are currently under widespread cultivation in Australia, Europe, Russia, and the Americas as a green manure, livestock fodder and grazing plant, and high protein additive for animal and human foods .

  • In Australia, the danger of cross-pollination of the wild bitter and cultivated sweet low-alkaloid variety is understood to be unacceptable when testing reveals the presence of one bitter bean per hundred sweet beans, and a wide quarantine zone is maintained around lupin-growing croplands to prevent wind-blown wild pollen from having a large influence on crop toxicity .