question about fava bean pods

This is my second year to grow fava beans. Last year, I grew Broad Windsor, and to save seed I let some of the pods dry on the plant.

This year, I grew a variety called Sweet Lorane. I was out harvesting some this morning and noticed that a bunch of the pods were splitting. One or two I would have thought a fluke, but it's dozens of them. So I'm puzzled and need some input from someone with fava growing experience. Is this normal? Did I miss something?

I like this variety and would like to save some seed. Should I collect it from the open pods and dry it on a drying tray?

Weird! Did you get rain recently after a dry spell?

The seed is fully viable at this stage. I might leave them to dry on the plant. I might pick the whole pods and dry them out-of the elements.

Joseph Farmer wrote:Weird! Did you get rain recently after a dry spell?

Yes! We had two hot dry weeks around 90-degrees and then 0.7" of rain the day before I found these. I wondered about that, but could come up with no reason that made sense.

I'll follow your suggestions for saving some of the seed. I really like this variety. It's low in tannin, so the beans can be eaten right out of the shell.

Thank you Joseph!

I would not save any seed from a split pod, or a plant with a lot of split pods. You'll be saving the genetics for splitting under your conditions.

Skandi, that's a good point to consider, although our conditions vary so much from year to year there's no way to predict. I should add that it wasn't all the pods that have done this. I picked about 3 pints of plump pods that were still intact. With more maturing it will be interesting to see what happens. I like this variety well enough that I'm willing to experiment and try again.

This is only my second year growing favas and I can't say that I've experienced splitting in either of those years. We just got rain after 2 months without and no splitting on my end... though, I design around not having water for 3-4 months at a time, so likely there was enough residual soil moisture to prevent problems.

With regard to seed saving, last year my only goal was a seed increase. We had a very wet spring and lots of plants were killed or severely crippled by fungal disease, though some showed clear signs of resistance. I saved seed from anything that lived long enough to produce it since I didn't want to limit my gene pool... even if they were very sickly, non-productive plants. Now that I'm growing out a much larger population from my saved seed, you can see that that disease resistance is much more prevalent (the plants with disease resistance fared better last year and produced more offspring than the sickly plants, thus making up a larger percentage of this generation.) Now that I've preserved a wide genetic base, this year I'm selecting from only the earliest and most productive. But I still have reserves in case there's something in that wider gene pool that I end up missing.

That is to say, I'd save from the plants with split pods in order to maximize genetics, and then select against that trait in future generations. Especially since the cause is probably environmental, and these plants at least have what it takes to survive and produce in that environment.

Personally, I'd let them dry on the plant, weather permitting. Let the plants put as much energy into the seeds as they can. Better chance of producing strong offspring that way.

I say let the splitters go to seed and toss them somewhere you won't be disturbing.
If any of them sprout and reproduce,  you are on your way to a self sowing variety.