A New Vegetable Soybean Cultivar, “Mirang” with Black Seed Coat

“Mirang”, a new cultivar for vegetable soybean, was developed from the cross between “Keunol” and “Geunjeongol” at Yeongnam Agricultural Research Institute (YARI) and released in 2005. The pedigree of Mirang, designated as Milyang 144 in 2002, was YS1161-3B-15-3-1-2. Mirang is the first vegetable soybean with black seed coat bred in Korea. Mirang has determinate growth habit, white flowers, tawny pubescence, short stem height, oval leaf shape, and tan pods at maturity. The mature seeds have a black seed coat with black hilum and yellow cotyledon. Over 3 year of Korea Regional Adaptation Tests (2003-2005) for vegetable soybean, Mirang shows partially resistant to soybean mosaic virus and lodging. Harvesting date of green pod in Miryang was Aug. 12 which was 8 days later than “Hwaeomput” and its stem height (45 cm) was silmilar to Hwaeomput. In the same tests, fresh pod of Mirang showed an average yield of 11.63 ton ha⁻¹, compared with 10.68 ton ha⁻¹ for the check cultivar Hwaeomput. Mirang had 7.0 cm fresh pod length, 12.9 mm fresh pod width, 70.4 g 100-green seed weight, 43.5% green seed protein content, and 17.4% green seed oil content. Anthocyanin content was 7.7 mg per 1 g fresh seed coat.