What is the difference between a legume, a pulse and a bean?

Question

What is the difference between a legume, a pulse and a bean?

Answer 1

All the three terms are interrelated , that is definite .

Now let us see how are they interrelated .

1 ) Legume =(((A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or a fruit of these plants. ))))

A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides.

A common name for this type of fruit is a "pod", although pod is also applied to a few other fruit types.

(((Well-known legumes include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins, and peanuts. )))

A peanut is not a nut in the botanical sense; a peanut is an indehiscent legume, that is, one whose pod does not split open on its own.

Legume plants are noteworthy for their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, an accomplishment attributable to a symbiotic relationship with certain bacteria known as rhizobia found in root nodules of these plants.

The ability to form this symbiosis reduces fertilizer costs for farmers and gardeners who grow legumes, and means that legumes can be used in a crop rotation to replenish soil that has been depleted of nitrogen.

2 ) Pulse =Pulses are defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as annual leguminous crops yielding from one to twelve grains or seeds of variable size, shape and color within a pod.

Pulses are used for food and animal feed.

(((The term pulses, as used by the FAO, is reserved for crops harvested solely for the dry grain.

This therefore excludes green beans and green peas, which are considered vegetable crops. ))))

Also excluded are crops that are mainly grown for oil extraction (oilseeds like soybeans and peanuts), and crops which are used exclusively for sowing (clovers, alfalfa).

Pulses are important food crops due to their high protein and essential amino acid content.

Like many leguminous crops, pulses play a key role in crop rotation due to their ability to fix nitrogen.

3 ) Bean =Bean is a common name for large plant seeds of several genera of the family Fabaceae (formerly Leguminosae) used for human food or animal feed.

Although "beans" usually means the seeds of bean plants, it can also mean (especially in the US) the whole young pods of bean plants, which if picked before the pods ripen and dry, can be tender enough to eat whole, whether cooked or raw.

Thus the word "green beans" means "green" in the sense of unripe (many are in fact, not green in color), as the beans inside the pods of green beans are often too small to form a significant part of the cooked vegetable.

The term "bean" originally referred to the seed of the broad bean, but was later expanded to include members of the genus Phaseolus, such as the common bean and the runner bean, and the related genus Vigna.

The term is now applied in a general way to many other related plants such as soybeans, peas, lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas (garbanzos), vetches and lupins.

((("Bean" can be used as a near-synonym of "pulse", ))))

an edible legume, though the term "pulses" is usually reserved for leguminous crops harvested for their dry grain and usually excludes crops mainly used for oil extraction (like soybeans and peanuts) or those used exclusively for sowing purposes (such as clover and alfalfa).

Leguminous crops harvested green for food, such as snap peas, snow peas, etc., are classified as vegetable crops.

(((In English usage, the word "beans" is also sometimes used to mean the seeds or pods of plants that are not in the family Leguminosae, but which bear a superficial resemblance to true beans, for example coffee beans, castor beans and cocoa beans (which resemble bean seeds), and vanilla beans (which resemble the pods).)))

From= A Botanist

Answer 2

A legume is a nitrogen fixing plant.  That means that they produce their own nitrogen.  Soybeans for example are  legumes.  Pulse is just a common name for legume.

Answer 3

A bean is a bean.a pulse is NOT a bean,a legume is a different thing altogether.

Answer 4

a bean is a variant of legume

a pulse is... a pulse?

Answer 5

Beans and pulses are a kind of legume.

There are many kinds of legumes like forage (grass) or grain and can span from trees to herbs. Pulses are dry grain legumes and must contain a fix number of seeds in a pod, used for direct consumption. Beans started off as the name of a vegetable, namely the runner bean. It then became inclusive of others that resemble the runner beans and now can be stretched to describe even coffee beans. The true beans mostly fit into this defintion of pulses, except for ones like soyabeans which are cultivated for extacting oil.