before cooking, common beans require a soaking time varying from 2 to 18 hours depending on the genotype, which makes it difficult to standardize the soaking time in order to reach the shortest cooking time. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of bean hydration capacity to standardize the shortest cooking time. Eighteen bean landraces and four commercial lines from plants cultivated under the same conditions for two growing seasons (2006/2007 and 2007/2008) were used in this study. The beans were soaked completely or partially for 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 hours in pure water at 25 ºC, followed by cooking time determination. The results showed that 22 genotypes evaluated presented high genetic diversity leading to great variability of cooking time, and they also indicated that seven hours of soaking was necessary to obtain a minimum of 82.5% hydration as an optimized condition to reach the fastest cooking time. Considering these findings, cooking tests for an early selection of bean lineages can be standardized and can be used to standardize Usage Value Analysis (UVA), which is usually required for official registration of common bean cultivar
Phaseolus vulgaris L; soaking; cooking time; technological trait
