Per la Fagiolina del Trasimeno The issue of the small Trasimeno bean or fagiolina was taken up by Slow Food at Castiglione del Lago in December 2000. The “philosophy” of the movement aims to restore and safeguard typical regional products – many on their way to extinction – that are cultivated by natural methods and known for their unique distinguishing qualitative features.
Regulatory control – a sort of classification of the product – is the fruit of a joint effort between the mountain community, sectorial associations and the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Perugia. The goal is to protect producers and consumers according to specifications agreed upon at a European level. Initially, many difficulties were encountered, especially in the selection of the 17 different bean types; however, these were overcome thanks to the biodiversity techniques which enabled us to distinguish the genetic factors of the Trasimeno bean, which are all very similar.
This small bean has been cultivated on the flatland around Lake Trasimeno since ancient times, even during Etruscan times. More recently, however, production has gradually decreased because the bean is considered a “poor” crop, unsuitable for large scale farming. The major difficulties for producers are in fact linked to production costs, especially harvesting: it is a product that matures in sequence.

It is a leguminous pulse and comes in the shape of a bean with a distinguishing “black eye” dotted at the point where the bean is attached to its pod. Currently, there are very few producers in the Trasimeno area who grow the bean, which is made possible by requesting the seed, almost near to extinction, from the seed bank at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Perugia.

Origins:

The small Trasimeno bean (Vigna unguicolata) does not belong to the Faseolum family (the American bean) but is to be found in distant Africa, from where it first arrived in Umbria, and then spread to other regions. According to Theophrastus, Aristotle’s favourite student, this species was grown in Greece in 300 AD, and therefore it was probably the Greeks who took it to other Mediterranean countries. It was grown at the time of Pliny the Elder, in the first century; first by the Etruscans and then by the Romans. And since then, up to the 1950s, it was grown by all the peasants that lived in the Lake Trasimeno basin. However, production has more recently been replaced by the American bean, which is much more productive.