Winged Bean

The winged bean, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus, is a tropical herbaceous legume also called the cigarillas, Goa bean or dragon bean, well known across South and Southeast Asia for its versatility and disease resistance, most likely originating in New Guinea and thriving in hot, humid equatorial regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and tropical Africa. Every part of the plant is edible: the leaves can be used like spinach, the flowers added to salads, the tubers eaten raw or cooked, and the seeds used much like soybeans, containing between 29.8 and 39 percent protein, comparable to soybeans nutritionally. Despite this, the winged bean remains cultivated only on a small scale, though it is widely seen as having the potential to become a major multi-use food crop across the tropics of Asia, Africa and Latin America.