By Francis Ndungu

Peter Maina, a farmer in Kabatini, Bahati, has shown Kalro’s Waithera bean outperforms all others in his own field trials, nearly doubling the yield of Nyota, and growing more than twice as fast as his usual Wairimu beans.

Peter offered part of his farm to test three bean varieties developed by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (Kalro), Waithera, Angaza and Nyota. All three were planted on April 17th, using two seeds per hole at a 50cm by 10cm spacing, with the same soil, rainfall, and treatment.

“I gave them the space so that farmers here could see for themselves,” said Peter. “I also planted my usual Wairimu beans next to the Kalro plots to compare, and the new varieties made a huge difference. Waithera grew faster and gave more than twice as many beans.”

Waithera produced 12 to 15 pods per plant and showed 99 per cent germination, thriving in both dry and wet conditions. It matured and dried faster than the others and resisted pests and diseases throughout. 

Nyota, by contrast, showed 80 per cent germination, was hit by rust, anthracnose and blight, and struggled in wet soils, yielding just 8 to 10 pods per plant.

Peter said the instructions for the trials had also exposed a lot of errors they had been making.

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“We used to plant many seeds in one hole thinking we’d get more beans. And we just used old beans as seed, even when they had disease. But we were getting very little and selling for poor prices,” he said.

Picture: Nyota infected with anthracnose

The farmers gathered in early July to inspect the mature bean plots with a Kalro trainer, who confirmed that it was normal for 2kg of the new seeds to produce 90kg of beans with the right spacing.

As well as delivering higher yields and better market prices, the new varieties have been bred so that they do not cause gas, ulcers, and heartburn. “The local beans gave my children swollen stomachs, so they stopped eating them,” said Peter. “But these ones have no such effects.”

“Farmers need to stop growing the old varieties,” said a Kalro trainer at the event. “These new beans give more, fetch better prices, and don’t cause problems when eaten.”