UK Pulses & Resources

The main pulse crops grown in the UK are faba bean (or field bean, Vicia faba) and pea (Pisum sativum). Over the years, PCGIN has funded the development of several germplasm collections and, more recently, sequence information. This page also provides links to useful resources from other organisations.

UK Pulses

The main pulse crops grown in the UK, faba bean and pea, are often grown as a ‘break crop’ in a rotation with wheat and oilseed rape. However, their commercial value is not just in soil improvement but also for the following markets:

  • Faba bean seeds are exported to the Middle East, mainly Egypt, to be eaten as dry-roasted snacks.
  • Pea seeds grown to maturity, also known as marrowfat peas or combining peas, end up on the commodity market for more general uses, such as canned mushy peas, pea soup or animal fodder. They are round-seeded varieties.
  • Peas harvested when fresh, or immature, are called vining peas in the industry and sold as garden peas or petit pois in the frozen section of supermarkets. These peas have a relatively high sugar content because they have a genetic mutation (sbeI) that slows down sugar-to-starch conversion during seed ripening. This also causes a wrinkled appearance of the dry seeds. The peas are harvested well before they fill up with starch anyway and frozen in or close to the field where they are grown.

Minor UK Pulse Crops

Below is a list of currently very minor UK pulse crops or potential new uses:

  • Faba bean flour as ingredient, for e.g. bread
  • Carlin peas, sold cooked in glass jars mostly found in health food stores
  • Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), the main ingredient of “Baked beans”, for which the beans are imported from the USA rather than grown in the UK because our climate is generally not warm enough. Some are sold by Hodmedods.
  • Chickpeas, small-scale trial plots but marketed in the UK by Hodmedods.
  • Legume vegetable crops: although not grouped with the pulses, these include broad beans, mange-touts and runner beans, for example. They are popular with allotment holders but not grown commercially. Some pea shoots and bean sprouts are grown in the UK by vertical farms.

Germplasm and genetic resources

Faba bean (Vicia faba)

Germplasm collections at University of Reading and NIAB

Vicia toolbox at NIAB

Genome sequence: publication; browser

Pea (Pisum sativum)

Germplasm collections at JIC-Germplasm Resource Unit (GRU)

Other germplasm collections (USDA, Poland ..)

Genome sequence: publication; genome browser

PCGIN Diversity Panel