{"id":174118,"date":"2026-08-05T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/?p=174118"},"modified":"2026-08-07T13:25:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:25:44","slug":"dried-bean-seeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tecscience.tec.mx\/en\/industrial-transformation\/dried-bean-seeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Dried Bean Seeds are not Dormant as Previously Thought: Study Shows their Biological Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When we see a bag of beans at the market, we rarely remember that they are alive. Dry and seemingly inert, the seeds aren’t exactly what we imagine when we think of an organism. For decades, science echoed this idea, assuming that their metabolism was virtually halted after harvesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study<\/a> challenges this by showing that, even when dry, common bean seeds maintain their biological activity<\/strong>, allowing them not only to retain their vitamin B9 reserves, but to increase them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are demonstrating that, at least, this metabolic pathway remains active,” says Roc\u00edo D\u00edaz de la Garza<\/a>, a research professor at the Institute for Obesity Research<\/a> (IOR) of Tecnol\u00f3gico de Monterrey. “We are breaking a paradigm.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research focused on a simple question, but one with major implications: what happens to folates \u2014the different forms of vitamin B9\u2014 while beans are stored?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In cereals such as corn, rice, and wheat, previous studies had documented that this vitamin degrades during storage<\/strong>, but in legumes, that story hadn’t been studied as much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To answer this, a group of researchers analyzed three commercial varieties of common bean under different combinations of temperature and humidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happens in real life is that the beans are harvested, dried, and stored until the buyer arrives,\u201d says D\u00edaz de la Garza<\/a>. \u201cHere in Mexico, seeds are stored without any control, the state of the ones stored in Zacatecas is very different from that in Sinaloa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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