Good Grains International, Inc.
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Lupin History and Development
Knowledge of Lupin as a nutritious food dates back to the healer and physician Hippocrates, in ancient Greece who, as early as 400 BC compared the Lupin bean favorably to peas, beans and lentils, as they were not gassy and did not cause bloating. Lupin's use was widespread throughout the Mediterranean region as human food, animal food, and as a green and natural fertilizer. Lupins were also found among, the food stores in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculenium (79 AD) and late Roman emperors actually fixed the price of Lupin as they froze commodity prices for wheat and other grains. Not only were Lupin eaten as a vegetable in ancient times, they were also grown extensively for livestock feed, for soil improvement, for use in beer making and for medicinal purposes. The Roman author Varro (11-27 BC) reported that every Roman inn had a "labrum Jupinarum," a basin for Lupin preparation. To this day, various Lupins remain a familiar bread or pastry flour, a pasta or a salted or sweetened condiment from a diverse range of geographies such as Italy, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, South Africa and Australia, to South America where it has been cultivated by the Incas in Peru, Bolivia and rural Chile for centuries under the name of "tarwi." Historically, regardless of location, Lupin's bitter flavor and high alkalinity limited its large scale use, requiring days of repeated and arduous washing and rinsing in clear water to remove its water-soluble alkaloids before it could be rendered edible to human and animal alike. Nonetheless, numerous strains of Lupin plants, flowers and legumes of domesticated and wild varieties have adorned the landscape as a sea of blue or white blossoms for millennia. These blossoms give way to the highly valued plump green Lupin pods. Important contributions toward the development of modern, more human compatible Lupin legumes were made during the 1920's and 1930's by Reinhold van Sengbusch of the Institute of Genetics in Berlin, Germany, who screened hundreds of thousands of individual Lupin plants in efforts to produce low alkaloid forms. Sengbusch used natural mutant strains to breed new seeds. After a period of inactivity, selective breeding programs following the German research began in the U.S. during the 1950's and continue to this day. This research, headed by Drs. Fred and Nancy Elliott, has led to the propagation of a new strain of Lupinus Albus: Sweet White Lupin "Ultra", a breakthrough with far-reaching nutritional, agricultural and economic implications. By 1975, influential Minnesota growers began cultivating the Lupin "Ultra" legume. Already established as a cool season crop, this new and versatile strain of Lupin was then adapted to growing in drought-ridden regions of Africa, as well as to a variety of other warm and subtropical climates and conditions. Thus, the principal distinction between Sweet White Lupin and all other Lupin is its ease of growth and preparation, flavor, digestibility and nutritional composition. Sweet White Lupin "Ultra" has been rendered extremely desirable and well-suited to human consumption and to human nutrition. So extraordinary, in fact, are the legumes many virtues that given an aggressive seed multiplication program, Sweet White Lupin demonstrates characteristics necessary to assume its position among the major world food crops. For over 20 years, Sweet White Lupin has been grown scientifically, experimentally and commercially by researchers, universities and small-scale commercial farmers and growers. It has further been tested in 27 U.S. states and over 20 countries internationally with many nations interested in its nutritional, agricultural and economic value. |
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The Lupin plant and legume (bean) date back to ancient times and have been cultivated by nearly every civilization since ancient Egypt and Babylon. Its first domestication and cultivation seems to have begun approximately 8,000 BC in Western Asia, where early farmers were discovering the advantages of non-shattering seeds. The name Lupin is derived from the Roman word lupus, the Latin word for wolf. Thus,
Lupin means, "wolf beans" presumably because the plant could thrive in marginal areas associated with the remote and austere habitats of wolves.