Vicia faba, commonly known as the broad bean, fava bean, or faba bean, is a species of vetch, a flowering plant in the pea and bean family Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated as a crop for human consumption, and also as a cover crop. Varieties with smaller, harder seeds that are fed to horses or other animals are called field bean, tic bean or tick bean. This legume is commonly consumed in many national and regional cuisines.
Some people have favism, a hemolytic response to the consumption of broad beans, a condition linked to a metabolic disorder known as G6PDD. Otherwise the beans, with the outer seed coat removed, can be eaten raw or cooked. With young seed pods, the outer seed coat can be eaten, and in very young pods, the entire seed pod can be eaten.
Description
Vicia faba is a stiffly erect, annual plant
The flowers are 1 to 2.5 cm (1⁄2 to 1 in) long with five petals; the standard petals are white, the wing petals are white with a black spot (true black, not deep purple or blue as is the case in many "black" markings) and the keel petals are white. Crimson-flowered broad beans also exist, which were recently saved from extinction. The flowers have a strong sweet scent which is attractive to bees and other pollinators.
The fruit is a broad, leathery pod that is green, but matures to a dark blackish-brown, with a densely downy surface; the wild species has pods that are 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 in) long and 1 cm diameter, but many modern cultivars developed for food use have pods 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10 in) long and 2–3 cm thick. Each bean pod contains 3–8 seeds. They are round to oval and have a 5–10 mm diameter in the wild plant, but are usually flattened and up to 20–25 mm long, 15 mm broad and 5–10 mm thick in food cultivars. V. faba has a diploid (2n) chromosome number of 12 (six homologous pairs). Five pairs are acrocentric chromosomes and one pair is metacentric.
