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Man this tree seems to have so many useful properties, why isn't already a crop then? > Its disagreeable taste and odor are due to bitter flavonoid constituent

Man this tree seems to have so many useful properties, why isn't already a crop then? > Its disagreeable taste and odor are due to bitter flavonoid constituents, including karanjin, pongamol, tannin, and karanjachromene.[11] These compounds induce nausea and vomiting if ingested in its natural form Wikipedia on the beans it produces.

staplers 2y ago
These compounds induce nausea and vomiting if ingested in its natural form In other words it's toxic.
- coryrc 2y ago
  Lactose does that to me, but it isn't toxic.
  - xolox 2y ago
    I think toxicity is a relative concept, not absolute. I mean you can die from drinking too much water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication) yet at the same time you need to drink plenty of water to survive. People have been making this point better than I ever could for hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison
xp84 2y ago
I am neutral as I have no idea about this but what was in the linked article, but in the linked article, they claim that they have a process for removing the natural “biopesticides” that result in it tasting so awful.
- forgetfulness 2y ago
  Not super hot on replacing food crops for what's a raw material for frying oil, cattle feed and maybe protein bars, to be frank. It was kind of a bad thing in sci fi media when working class people were living off that kind of stuff rather than proper meals.
alwa 2y ago
Interestingly enough this is also true of a fair number of staple food stocks, especially other legumes. Lima beans contain linamarin, lentils and chickpeas contain lectins, as do pretty much all the other beans you’ve heard of in their uncooked form. Those, of course, you just cook in order to make them delicious. With these, this Terviva firm seems to have developed and patented a treatment process involving a solvent-based extraction under sonication. I’m only skimming a patent from a field that’s not my own, but it looks like they’re able to do it by mashing it up and washing it with either a methylated ketone like acetone (00120) or ethanol (00141) [0]. Apparently the wash works just as well for the protein-rich seedcake as it does for the oil you express [1]. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230148638A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230148638A1/en [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2020358833A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2020358833A1/en
- forgetfulness 2y ago
  Yes, indeed, a lot of plants and fungi aren't edible until cooked, but that's a pretty direct and simple process from e.g. raw bean to whole bean in your stomach, which has a lot of nutritional value. Best case scenarios here are cooking oil and protein isolate.
culi 2y ago
It takes a lot to turn a crop into an industry. There's plenty of "miracle" crops out there. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.593711/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3... A lot of times the issue is just logistics. Many of these are tropical and don't fruit at a predictable, narrow time of the year. Making it hard to time when you hire a bunch of labor and do your harvest. Then ofc there's always the marketing problem of convincing people to use this new plant
- dan353hehe 2y ago
  All very valid points. I live in the dessert, and we have mesquite trees here everywhere. They also produce a bean in a pod which I learned several years ago is edible! I ordered some flour and put it in bread and other things. It’s a sweet flour that tastes like a very interesting chocolate. It’s just hard to harvest, and to mill, and not a lot of people are willing to eat different things. But the tree thrives on less then 8 inches of rain a year.
  - culi 2y ago
    I love mesquite! It's a staple crop of indigenous people there. It's also got some of the deepest roots of any plant ever and can spread rhizomatically. It was introduced into the old world to hopefully fight desertification but has ended up being one of the worst invasive plants ever introduced. You'd basically need an excavator to get rid of one once established
Caius-Cosades 2y ago
Kudzu plant has some nice properties too. And it too, was deemed to be an useful plant in the american south-west, until it wasn't. And now nearly 70 years after it has overstayed it's welcome, it's still spreading uncontrollably. Outdoor plants have this rather unpleasant tendency of not ceasing to exist whenever it's convenient for people. 70 years and there still isn't any particularly viable way to deal with this slow moving ecological apocalypse known as Kudzu.

staplers 2y ago

These compounds induce nausea and vomiting if ingested in its natural form In other words it's toxic.

coryrc 2y ago
Lactose does that to me, but it isn't toxic.
- xolox 2y ago
  I think toxicity is a relative concept, not absolute. I mean you can die from drinking too much water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication) yet at the same time you need to drink plenty of water to survive. People have been making this point better than I ever could for hundreds of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison

xp84 2y ago

I am neutral as I have no idea about this but what was in the linked article, but in the linked article, they claim that they have a process for removing the natural “biopesticides” that result in it tasting so awful.

forgetfulness 2y ago
Not super hot on replacing food crops for what's a raw material for frying oil, cattle feed and maybe protein bars, to be frank. It was kind of a bad thing in sci fi media when working class people were living off that kind of stuff rather than proper meals.

alwa 2y ago

Interestingly enough this is also true of a fair number of staple food stocks, especially other legumes. Lima beans contain linamarin, lentils and chickpeas contain lectins, as do pretty much all the other beans you’ve heard of in their uncooked form. Those, of course, you just cook in order to make them delicious. With these, this Terviva firm seems to have developed and patented a treatment process involving a solvent-based extraction under sonication. I’m only skimming a patent from a field that’s not my own, but it looks like they’re able to do it by mashing it up and washing it with either a methylated ketone like acetone (00120) or ethanol (00141) [0]. Apparently the wash works just as well for the protein-rich seedcake as it does for the oil you express [1]. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230148638A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230148638A1/en [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2020358833A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2020358833A1/en

forgetfulness 2y ago
Yes, indeed, a lot of plants and fungi aren't edible until cooked, but that's a pretty direct and simple process from e.g. raw bean to whole bean in your stomach, which has a lot of nutritional value. Best case scenarios here are cooking oil and protein isolate.

culi 2y ago

It takes a lot to turn a crop into an industry. There's plenty of "miracle" crops out there. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.593711/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3... A lot of times the issue is just logistics. Many of these are tropical and don't fruit at a predictable, narrow time of the year. Making it hard to time when you hire a bunch of labor and do your harvest. Then ofc there's always the marketing problem of convincing people to use this new plant

dan353hehe 2y ago
All very valid points. I live in the dessert, and we have mesquite trees here everywhere. They also produce a bean in a pod which I learned several years ago is edible! I ordered some flour and put it in bread and other things. It’s a sweet flour that tastes like a very interesting chocolate. It’s just hard to harvest, and to mill, and not a lot of people are willing to eat different things. But the tree thrives on less then 8 inches of rain a year.
- culi 2y ago
  I love mesquite! It's a staple crop of indigenous people there. It's also got some of the deepest roots of any plant ever and can spread rhizomatically. It was introduced into the old world to hopefully fight desertification but has ended up being one of the worst invasive plants ever introduced. You'd basically need an excavator to get rid of one once established

Caius-Cosades 2y ago

Kudzu plant has some nice properties too. And it too, was deemed to be an useful plant in the american south-west, until it wasn't. And now nearly 70 years after it has overstayed it's welcome, it's still spreading uncontrollably. Outdoor plants have this rather unpleasant tendency of not ceasing to exist whenever it's convenient for people. 70 years and there still isn't any particularly viable way to deal with this slow moving ecological apocalypse known as Kudzu.