Rice Bean

Vigna umbellata, commonly called the ricebean or rice bean, is a warm-season annual vine legume with yellow flowers and small edible beans, previously classified as Phaseolus calcaratus before being placed in the genus Vigna within the legume family Fabaceae. Its presumed center of domestication is Indo-China, and it is grown today across that region and into southern China, India, Nepal and Bangladesh, historically as a lowland crop planted on residual moisture after rice harvest, though this practice has declined as shorter-duration rice varieties spread. It is used as a dried pulse for human food, as animal fodder, as green manure and as a vegetable, and is more often intercropped with maize, sorghum or cowpea than grown alone, particularly in upland areas. Despite its nutritional potential and tolerance of marginal land, the rice bean remains little known, little researched and little exploited in modern agriculture.