SOY BEANS 



E. R. Minn, Binghamton, N. Y. 



Farmers' Institute Lecturer, formerly Farm Bureau Manager, Broome County, N.Y. 



Although the soy bean is a member of 

 the great legume family, the' botanists 

 have placed it in a different genus from 

 those to which our more common clovers 

 and other legumes belong. Its scientific 

 name is Glycine hispida. Like the garden 

 bean, it is a tender annual, upright in 

 its habit of growth, reaching a height of 

 four feet in the larger varieties. It is 

 characterized by numerous short hairs on 

 both stem and leaves, which give it a soft, 

 velvety appearance. The flowers are white or purple', not con- 

 spicuous, and are borne close to the stem. The seeds may be black, 

 brown, green, or yellow, according to the variety, with from, two to 

 four seeds in each short pod. Its root system is rather limited, 

 but has a short, strong taproot. The tubercles formed by the 

 nitrogen-gathering bacteria associated with this plant are often 

 as large as the seeds of the garden pea, and very prominent on the 

 roots of well-inoculated plants. 



HISTORY 



The soy bean has been cultivated in China and Japan for many 

 centuries. It is the most important legume grown in those 

 countries'. Its cultivation has spread slowly to other countries, 

 reaching Europe in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and 

 the United States as late as 1829 — the year in which Thomas 

 Nuttall described its^ possibilities as a crop for this country, in 

 the New England Farmer. The Perry expedition to Japan in 

 1853 brought back seeds of two kinds of soy beans for trial in this 

 country. Thirty years ago our agricultural eixperiment stations 

 first imported seed from Japan and aroused some interest among 



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