6 BULLETIN 119, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



boiling, the red color of the seed coats dissolves, and on this account 

 the water is sometimes changed once or twice. The final product is 

 somewhat reddish, however. The bean meal in whatever way pre- 

 pared is eaten in soups and gruels of various kinds, often sweetened. 

 It is also used for making various kinds of cakes and confections. 



Other kinds of beans which are cheaper are also used to make an, 

 but usually to mix with the more expensive adsuki. 



Adsuki beans are also eaten popped like corn, as a coffee substi- 

 tute, and candied by boiling in sugar, the last product being called 

 amanatto. The flour is also used for shampoos and to make facial 

 cream. 



The use of beans to make sweetmeats seems to be purely a Japanese 

 invention, as there are no similar foods used by Europeans or Ameri- 

 cans. There seems no good reason why food so rich in protein and 

 lacking any objectionable " beany" flavor might not become popular 

 in the United States. No other bean lends itself so well to grinding 

 into meal or flour, as the seeds are hard and brittle. 



COMPARISON WITH OTHER SIMILAR LEGUMES. 



The most valuable feature of the adsuki bean lies in its large 

 yield of seed, which under Arlington farm conditions is excelled only 

 by the soy bean. These beans are exceedingly popular as food among 

 the Japanese and Koreans. Owing to their texture they are easily 

 ground into meal or flour and for such purposes are far superior to 

 any other bean. The flavor, too, is very delicate, lacking any objec- 

 tionable taste. The green pods quickly become fibrous, and there- 

 fore they are not desirable as snap beans. 



As forage plants the adsuki beans can not compete with the cow- 

 pea and the soy bean, as their initial growth is slow and their total 

 yield of herbage inferior. In the South they are subject both to 

 wilt (Fusariwn sp.) and to root-knot caused by the nematode Heter- 

 odera radicicola. Neither of these diseases has, however, caused any 

 serious destruction of the plants. 



PREVIOUS INTRODUCTIONS. 



Among the seeds brought back from Japan by the Perry expedi- 

 tion in 1854 was a "red-seeded bean." (Browne, 1855, p. XV.) 

 The identity of this bean has never been definitely determined, but 

 it was doubtless the most common form of adsuki bean. 



Two varieties of the adsuki bean were tested at the Kansas Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station in 1891 by Prof. C. C. Georgeson (1891, 

 p. 237). Both of these had red seeds, one having the pods "white," 

 the other "black." The white-podded variety yielded 16.3 bushels 

 per acre; the black-podded, 8.7 bushels. In thrashing, the beans 

 were found to crack easily, and so they were flailed. The beans 

 were tested only as human food. "These beans have been sub- 



