Cooking time is one of the traits evaluated by many breeding programs, and the Mattson Bean Cooker is the recommended equipment for measuring this variable (Proctor & Watts, 1987). In a standard Mattson analysis, soaked grains are positioned in each of the saddles of the rack so that the tip of each plunger is in contact with the surface of the grain. During the cooking test the lower portion of the cooker rack is immersed in a boiling water bath. When the grain becomes sufficiently tender, the plunger penetrates the grain and drops a short distance through the hole in the saddle. The time

Venetoclax molecular weight at which a plunger drops is recorded manually (Wang & Daun, 2005). Instrumental texture analysis has been increasingly applied to assess the hardening of beans (Nasar-Abbas et al., 2008; Saha, Singh, Mahajan, & Gupta, 2009; Yousif, Deeth, Caffin, & Lisle, 2002), due to its characteristic of fast and practical execution, which enable its use to evaluate large number of genotypes in breeding program. However, the lack of standardization of sample preparation for this

type of analysis has resulted in quite divergent reports in the literature, making it difficult to compare the results. When the bean breeding program evaluates the grain resistance to cooking, it is necessary to adopt LDN-193189 purchase a method that is useful for distinguishing the differences in germplasm, conferring

high experimental accuracy and being representative of the cooking pattern that usually is achieved by consumers (Ribeiro, Cargnelutti Filho, Poersch, & Rosa, 2007). In this sense, more efficient and cost-effective methods of preparing and evaluating beans cooking quality would encourage the adoption of grain quality improvement as a focus of breeding programs and facilitate development of common beans’ cultivars with Adenosine triphosphate improved grain quality (Yeung et al., 2009). This work aimed to evaluate the effect of different practices for cooking fresh crop and aged dry beans on hardness and also to propose a procedure to prepare bean for instrumental texture analysis. Carioca beans (P. vulgaris L., cv Pérola) were provided by Embrapa Rice and Beans (Santo Antônio de Goiás, Brazil). The material was grown in two seasons at the same location (Capivara’s Farm, Santo Antônio de Goiás, Brazil). The first crop was harvested at the end of June 2011 and the second one at the beginning of October 2011. After harvest samples were naturally dried and sorted by hand to remove extremely small beans and those with defective seed coat or excessively dirty surfaces. Then each crop of carioca beans were packaged in polyethylene bags with a capacity of about 2 kg until the analysis.