Bean growers and others walk through a field of Coyne Great Northern beans during a recent field day in Scotts Bluff County.
New UNL dry edible bean cultivar looking good in first season
Coyne, a new variety of Great Northern dry edible bean released by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2008, is getting positive reviews during its first year of commercial availability.
Yields won’t be known until the dry beans have been harvested in several weeks. But Coyne has compared favorably to other varieties of Great Northerns, as well as other market classes of dry beans, in disease resistance, bean quality, and several other traits, according to several farmers and a dry bean producer.
Stateline Dry Bean Cooperative hosted a field day recently at several fields north of Mitchell in Scotts Bluff County. Limited quantities of Coyne were available this year from Stateline and several other processors. A few thousand acres were planted in western Nebraska, from Hay Springs southwest to Gering and west to Torrington, Wyo.
Field specialist Dave Dietrich of Stateline said Coyne has demonstrated some desirable qualities, such as excellent size and good color. He said the beans might be suitable for canning, where quality and appearance is especially important. “I don’t know if there’ll be a demand for canners, but if there will, this would fit the bill,” he said.
Dietrich said Coyne was rust-free in areas where other varieties nearby had been affected by the disease. There was some common bacterial blight observed, he said, but Coyne appears to be more resistant than other beans.
Jeff Jenkins, one of the growers whose fields were on display, said the Coyne Great Northerns looked “excellent” disease-wise compared to other Great Northern varieties and pinto beans he had planted. He spotted no common rust or common bacterial blight. Coyne was bred specifically for enhanced resistance to those diseases, which have been major problems for Nebraska dry bean producers.
Because Coyne is an upright plant, getting irrigation water to flow down the furrows in the ditch-irrigated field was easy, Jenkins said. And when the bean plants began ripening recently, turning from green to yellow, the change was very uniform.
Rod Loose, who had a field of Coyne across the road from Jenkins, said his fields also were disease-free.
Treasure Valley Seed of Wilder, Idaho, has the sole license to grow Coyne seed, but the new bean is a public variety. It can be bought by anybody. Treasure Valley Seed representative Randy Mattson of Chaska, Minn., said Coyne should be widely available in 2012 after a good year of seed production this year at various locations in Wyoming and Idaho. The seeds will be coming into the bins soon.
“Any farmer who wants to plant a field or two next year shouldn’t have a problem,” Mattson said.
Although there’s no widespread harvest data yet, Mattson said, “the yield potential is there, no doubt.” UNL Dry Bean Breeding Specialist Dr. Carlos Urrea said Coyne yields were very consistent at around 2,700 pounds per acre during three years of trials from 2008 until 2010.
Several other farmers who planted Coyne this year echoed Jenkins and Loose about Coyne’s characteristics. The beans are rust-free, appear to be turning color well as harvest approaches, and stand up pretty well, they said. Some of the fields were irrigated from canals, others by center-pivot systems.
“From what I’ve seen,” said grower Larry Birdsall, “it could take over a fair share of the market acres.”
Mattson said Coyne probably will be well accepted for several reasons. It was developed specifically for the western Nebraska production area. It was developed by a public university, UNL, which also will receive a royalty for each bag of seed sold. And it was named after Dermot P. Coyne, a bean breeder at Nebraska for about 30 years before retiring in 2001. Coyne died in 2002. Coyne’s work led to the release of many popular dry bean varieties.
Coyne is a midseason bean maturing 91 days after planting and ranging in maturity from 90 to 92 days. Its seed coat is bright white. It exhibits a semi-upright growth habit.
The release of Coyne is the fruit of collaboration between UNL, the Nebraska Dry Bean Growers Association, and the Nebraska Dry Bean Commission, which uses dry bean check-off funds to provide some of the funding that supports UNL’s bean- breeding program.
