Jared Bento, research specialist with Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers (MPSG), was ready to greet attendees of the 2026 Dry Bean Research Tour held at AAFC Morden on Aug. 11. There were various dry bean resource materials, along with the newest Dry Bean Bulletin available for everyone.
Dry Bean Bulletin August 2026 – Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers
MPSG Executive Director Patti Rothenburger PhD, welcomed the crowd and introduced our MPSG staff, as well as, thanked the breeders, scientists, researchers, and specialists that would be speaking during the dry bean tour.
Juan Osorno from North Dakota State University raises his hand during the morning introductions. The crowd was an engaged mix of farmers, agronomists, media, and dry bean company representatives.
The crowd was eager to see and learn about the dry bean resilience studies.
Anfu Hou, research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Morden Research and Development Centre, as the host site for this study, welcomed everyone to AAFC Morden. He spoke about their soil moisture probes and that they had very little rain in July.
The Resilience in Dry Beans Study includes plots at Saskatoon, Sask.; Harrow, Ont.; Morden and two sites in North Dakota. We can learn a lot about a variety by tracking its performance under different temperature and climatic conditions. They don’t spray for white mould in these studies (except for Harrow). They want to see the dry beans performance under natural white mould pressure.
At Morden, the dry bean varieties were clearly showing differences in heights, maturities and disease tolerances.
Dry beans aren’t photo period sensitive.
Vines types are indeterminant and bush types are determinant.
Kirsten Bett (left), professor of plant sciences at the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan spoke about the Dry Bean Resilience study.
In Kirsten’s work she has found that yellow beans seem to be the most water logging tolerant of all the dry bean market classes.
Juan Osorno (right), dry bean breeder and geneticist at the Department of Plant Science at North Dakota State University.
Jamie Larsen (left), research scientist and dry bean breeder at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Harrow Research and Development Centre, told the crowd that in 2025 at Harrow, Ont. they did see a big yield differences in irrigated versus non irrigated dry beans. Typically, the later maturing beans flowered for longer and had more stability. In Ontario, 80 per cent of the dry beans grown are navy beans. Jamie mentioned that navy beans don’t do well in flooding situations.
Anfu Hou (middle).
In Manitoba, the majority of the dry beans grown are pinto beans and black beans.
Juan Osorno (right) Great shirt!
At the next stop, we learned about white mould, bacterial blight, soybean mycorrhizae interaction with rhizobia, and fusarium root rot suppression studies.
AAFC Morden has a long established Aphanomyces nursery which is very important for pea breeding and variety registration information.
(L-R) Ahmed Abdelmagid, research scientist (oilseed crops pathology) at Agriculture And Agri-Food Canada, Morden Research and Development Center and Ben Martens, MPSG Director for Boissevain area.
The plots where white mould screening of dry bean co-op lines are done with irrigation to ensure white mould infection.
What does the attentive group have in their hands?
Excellent resource material explaining dry bean diseases in detail.
Anand Aneja, agronomist in residence for research at Assiniboine College explained his fungicide trials in black beans, taking place in Brandon.
Yong Min Ki, research scientist in phytopathology at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Brandon spoke about phytophthora root rot testing and his studies to determine if soybean cyst nematodes are present and a concern in Manitoba dry bean fields.
Cassandra Tkachuk (left), MPSG research project manager, asked the crowd to observe a moment of silence to honour the late Dennis Lange, a true icon of the Manitoba dry bean industry. Ashlyn Kropp (right), MPSG, On-Farm Network research assistant.
Darren Bond, farm management specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, discussed cost/benefit analysis and risk/reward decision making when considering fungicide applications for white mould in dry beans. Better yield potential and higher disease risk usually go hand in hand. Some producers are targeting yields as high as 3,000 to 3,500 pounds per acre. In dry beans, seed quality also does matter.
Kristen MacMillan, agronomist in residence and instructor for soybean and pulse crop agronomy and cropping systems at the University of Manitoba. Kristen has done an immense amount of work on dry bean inoculants and nitrogen rates.
Dry beans are non selective as a host for rhizobia species, but we are very interested to study if certain rhizobia species are successful for dry bean nodulation, do they maintain their population levels and can they proliferate in certain Manitoba soils.
Jamie Larsen spoke about the importance of collaborating together to ensure successful public dry bean breeding programs.
What have you “bean” seeing this year across the province? Ashlyn Kropp speaking to the crowd about MPSG’s regional variety trials for wide and narrow row dry beans. MPSG independently evaluates dry bean varieties at various locations across Manitoba. The data collected at these trials is published in our MPSG Pulse and Soybean Variety Guide and Seed Manitoba to help farmers make informed variety selection decisions.
2026 Pulse and Soybean Variety Guide – Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers – the data from the 2025 growing season
Everyone really enjoyed the chance to wander through, touch and compare the different dry bean varieties and market classes.
Steam is a navy bean variety.
CDC Turtle Mountain is a black bean variety.
T9905 is a tried and tested navy bean variety.
Eclipse is a black bean variety.
Umbra is a black bean variety.
AAC Argosy is a navy bean variety. AAC means it was bred and developed thru public breeding in the AAFC program.
OAC Seal is a navy bean variety.
Slate is a black bean variety that is registered in the United States.
CDC Blackstrap is a black bean variety.
OAC Charm is a navy bean variety.
Vibrant is a pinto bean variety.
Shock is a navy bean variety.
Cranberry beans (above) are always earlier maturing than black beans (below).
Well, that sure has “bean” a great morning! Thanks to everyone who attended.