Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Extension Vegetable Specialist Tony Melton is doing research at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center near Florence on heat tolerant butterbeans. South Carolina vegetable growers are a hard-working group of farmers who often grow multiple crops in order to stay profitable. With the increase in night time temperatures which we’ve experienced over the past years, our traditional varieties of butterbeans have stopped setting fruits and our specialty growers have suffered crops failures as a result. Tony is doing trials on different varieties and choosing seeds from those that show promise and replanting those selections to try to develop a line of heat-tolerant beans. And not just in South Carolina, Extension and USDA specialists across the South are working to develop heat resistant varieties of high-value vegetable crops so our farmers can stay in business.
Heat Tolerant Butterbeans
