GUELPH – The little-bean-that-could not only won Canada’s seed of the year in 2022 but has now earned the University of Guelph’s (U of G) 2024 Innovation of the Year Award.
The bean in question? The dynasty kidney bean.
Dynasty, a high-yield and disease resistant crop, has become the choice kidney bean for producers in Ontario, accounting for more than 90 per cent of all dark red kidney bean acreage in Ontario.
U of G professor emeritus Dr. Peter Pauls developed dynasty with research technician Tom Smith at the Ontario Crops Research Centre in Elora.
The cross (the act of cross pollinating plants) that led to the award-winning variation was initiated in the early 2000s by former U of G researcher Dr. Tom Michaels.
“We all shared in the development of the variety and its testing,” Pauls told the Advertiser.
Following Michaels’ leave, Pauls took over responsibility for the bean breeding program in 2003 which included finding funding opportunities, setting long-term objectives, hiring staff and more.
The process
The program uses a population breeding strategy based on recurrent selection to improve the commercial traits of navy, black, cranberry, kidney (dark and light red, white) and pinto bean market classes for Canadian production.
Each year, participants in the program make 200 or more crosses, conduct preliminary and advanced yield trials on white and coloured beans and develop new registered varieties for Ontario bean growers.
For those who may not know, crop yield is a standard measurement of the amount of agricultural production harvested per unit of land area.
“Plant breeding has been going on for quite a while,” explained Pauls.
“If I have a parent (bean) that is disease resistant and the other one might have good cooking quality, which was the case in the development of this variety, the two [were then] brought together by transferring pollen from one flower to another flower.”
Those handling the beans artificially fertilize the kidney bean flowers and collect the seed hoping some have gained attributes from the two parents from the cross.
“The chances of that happening are slim so we had to look at fairly large families from those kinds of crosses … for a period of typically at least seven years in the field evaluating,” he said.
It can take 10 to 15 years for the entire process to take place, from the cross to the can of beans on the shelf.
Once the bean is created and has been registered by the Ontario Pulse Crop committee at various locations in the province, it is then time for farmers to make some decisions.
A farmer decides the kind of bean they want to grow, next they must find a distributer, a company with different named varieties that have proven themselves to perform in the field, explained Pauls.
“Even after we decide that it has merit … there are additional steps and those steps include producing enough seed so it can actually grow hundreds of acres rather than the small plots that we work on,” he said.
Innovation of the year
The university obtains nominations, which are received by an award review committee, whose members consider each submission.
“The dynasty bean performs well in the field and has since gained a reputation with farmers,” he added.
“It was a significant change in productivity in the field so that it merited recognition in terms of innovation.”

DR. PETER PAULS
Pauls wrote a small description of the dynasty and sent it to the committee.
He was thrilled to see the group effort of his large team being recognized.
“It takes a lot of people along the way … there are all kinds of other technicians that handle the material as it goes through the various steps through the number of years,” Pauls said.
The winning recipient of the 2023 Innovation of the Year Award used genetic selection methods to reduce methane emissions in dairy cattle.
The award was developed to recognize researchers for creative strategies or products that make a positive impact.
“It can be a really profitable crop if everything goes well,” he said.
His future
Pauls and his team have recently released a new bean variety, gallantry, derived from a cross with dynasty.
Gallantry is a smaller seed in size, matures a day earlier and delivers an additional 2.7% yield improvement over five years.
Although Pauls is retired he still has a foot in the bean industry with several future projects focused on exploring the genetics behind the various traits a bean can contain.
The current bean breeder at the university, who began in September, is Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi.