Laisha
AI Operating System for Agriculture
Enter Laisha
Laisha
AI Operating System for Agriculture
Enter Laisha
Vigna angularis · Also called: Azuki bean, Aduki bean, Red bean, Red mung bean, Chi xiao dou, Pat, Hongdou, Azuki
Photo: Qwert1234, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
Adzuki is a pulse sold on how it looks, which makes it unlike almost every other pulse in this library. Most of the crop goes into sweet red bean paste across China, Japan and Korea, and the buyers for that paste pay for a bright even red seed of uniform size with an unbroken skin. A cracked or dull or mixed-size lot is not a slightly cheaper lot; it is a different and much poorer market. China grows most of the world's crop, Japan's Hokkaido is the premium region, and Korea, Taiwan, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Argentina all grow it commercially. For a grower who can handle a crop gently and grade it honestly, that appearance premium is real money that soil and rainfall cannot give you.
If you see: A sample full of seeds with split or flaked skins, and a buyer offering a much lower grade.
It likely means: The crop was too dry when it was threshed, or the threshing was too hard. Adzuki skins crack easily and the market pays for them intact.
Do this: Harvest when most pods are brown rather than waiting until everything is bone dry.
If you see: Beans on the ground beneath the crop and a lighter harvest than the field looked like giving.
It likely means: It was left too long. The cultivated crop shatters far less than the wild plant it came from, but it has not lost the habit.
Do this: Walk the field daily once the pods start browning.
If you see: Plenty of pods that are flat, part-filled, or hold small shrivelled seed.
It likely means: Usually drought during flowering and pod filling, sometimes sucking bugs feeding on the developing seed.
Do this: Keep the soil evenly moist right through flowering and pod fill, which is the crop's most demanding period.
If you see: Plants yellowing from the base and dying, worst in the low parts of the field after rain.
It likely means: Waterlogging and the root rots that follow it. Adzuki is unusually intolerant of wet feet, even briefly.
Do this: Choose free-draining ground and avoid low spots that hold water.
If you see: Stored beans that have gone dull or brownish instead of staying bright red.
It likely means: They were stored in the light, or held too long, or dried in fierce sun. Colour is part of the price for this crop.
Do this: Store in the dark, in sealed opaque containers rather than clear ones on an open shelf.
If you see: Small round holes in stored beans, fine dust in the container, and small beetles moving in it.
It likely means: Seed beetles. They begin in the field and multiply in the store, and they ruin a crop whose whole value is appearance.
Do this: Sun the grain for a few hours before storing, which kills eggs on the surface.
Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your adzuki is worth before you agree a price with anybody.
If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.
What does the plant look like?
What do the pods look like while they are filling?
When should the crop be cut?