UC Dry Bean Blog

A question came up about managing root-knot nematodes in processing tomato and lima bean rotations. Root-knot nematodes are tiny worm-like soil dwelling pests that cause root galling on plant roots, resulting in significant yield and quality losses.

We cut our blackeye bean (cowpea) research plots at UC Davis almost 3 weeks ago and they're still too green to harvest. If we tried now, the vines would get wrapped around the threshing cylinder.

Last week, I visited a baby lima field in the southwest part of San Joaquin County that had overall poor pod set. Pods were filling lower in the canopy, but flowers had not set higher on the plants.

Have you ever wondered about this damage to garbanzo beans where there's a hole clipped in the pod and the seed is missing (see photo)? In this case, the damage is from pesky ground squirrels that were foraging in and around our garbanzo research plots at UC Davis this spring.

Recently, I received a call about a blackeye bean field in the San Joaquin Valley with a lot of bean pods that did not fill out at the tips (photo). I contacted the UC Riverside blackeye bean breeders Drs.