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Legumes have gained increased dietary importance in recent years due to their recognized health benefits. Recent plant protein revolution has elevated legumes to the forefront from consumers' and food industry's perspective. Unlike cereal proteins and starches, there is a scarcity of information on the structural properties of legume starches. Consumption of legume‐derived dietary fibers have a positive impact on the human health, in particular, gut health, which is a current research focus for nutrition and health professionals. Knowledge of legume ingredients properties (e.g., protein denaturation, starch gelatinization, pasting, and thermal properties) could aid in understanding functionality and potential uses of these materials. The physicochemical, thermal, and the functional properties of legume proteins, starches, and dietary fibers are elucidated. Both the food ingredient manufacturers and research and development professionals in the food industry can benefit from the information provided in this review article.

A knowledge of the relative proportion of additive and nonadditive genetic variances for complex traits in a population forms a basis for studying trait inheritance and can be used as a tool in plant breeding. A North Carolina Design II mating scheme was used to determine the inheritance of cooking time, protein and tannin content, and water absorption among 16 genotypes of dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) representative of the Andean Center of Domestication. Heritability and the degree of dominance for the traits were also calculated to provide guidelines for adopting breeding strategies for cultivar development. Thirty-two progeny resulted from the matings and these were assigned to two sets of 16 progeny each. Variances due to general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) were significant for the traits. The GCA was larger in all cases. Narrow-sense heritability for protein, tannin, water absorption, and cooking time averaged 0.88, 0.91, 0.77, and 0.90, respectively. Degree of dominance estimates indicted that the traits were governed by genes with partial dominance except, in one case, tannin had a degree of dominance value of zero, indicating no dominance. The phenotypic correlation (-0.82) between water absorption and cooking time justifies using the water absorption trait as an indirect selection method for cooking time. With regard to parent selection in crosses, significant differences between GCA females and GCA males suggested cytoplasmic influences on trait expression. Hence, the way a parent is used in a cross (i.e., as female or male) will offset trait segregation. Using fast-cooking bean cultivars in conjunction with fuel-efficient cooking methods may be the best strategy to conserve fuelwood and help reduce the rate of deforestation in East and Central Africa.

Navy beans were stored for 9 months under three conditions (S"C/ 40% RH, 2O"C/73% RH, and 35"C/80% RH) to produce different degrees of hard-to-cook (HTC) defect. Changes in free hydroxycinnamic acids, hexane soluble and methanol soluble hydroxycinnamic acids, cell wall bound hydroxycinnamic acids, and lignin content were determined. Storage induced HTC beans contained higher levels of hydroxycinnamic acids (especially ferulic acid) than the control beans in all fractions prepared from seed coats and cotyledons except for the methanol soluble and cell wall bound phenolic acid fractions from cotyledons. No significant changes in lignin content were detected among the treatments. Large increases in free hydroxycinnamic acid content associated with increased hardening, suggest a relationship between these two factors.