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"It is difficult to state the yield, more than that it is usually very abundant, often amounting to from one to several bushels on a small tree. It should also be noticed in this connection that the beans are quite bulky. One bushel weighs about twenty-one pounds."

Analyses show[1] the high content of sugar and other nutrients and explain why the animals are so fond of the beans.

Mr. G. P. Walton of the U. S. Department of Agriculture says, "After a favorable season the quantities of mesquite beans available over large areas of southwestern United States are limited only by the facilities for gathering the ripe fruit. Wilson[2] states that in southern New Mexico it is not uncommon to see a medium-sized bush, with a spread of not more than fourteen to eighteen feet, bearing from one to one and one-half bushels of beans. Although the process of gathering the fruit is tedious, during the 1917 season the beans could be secured for from twenty to thirty cents per one hundred pounds. A native worker at the New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station gathered about one hundred and seventy-five pounds of dried beans in a day.[3] Since the pods weigh but twenty-one pounds to the bushel[4] however, the man gathered only eight and one-third bushels, not a very strenuous day's work. In a northwestern province of India, a good tree may yield more than two hundred pounds of ripe fruit a year."[5]

  1. ↑ See p. 302.

    "The air-dry fruit, entire, was found to contain from 17.53 to 17.67 per cent, of cane sugar, all of which was in the pods. Further examination of another sample of pods showed them to contain 2.4 per cent. of grape sugar, and 21.5 per cent. of cane sugar, no starch or tannic acid being present." (Arizona Bulletin. No. 13, R. H. Forbes.)

  2. ↑ C. P. Wilson, "Value of Mesquite Beans for Pig Feeding," in New Mexico Farm Courier, 1917. Vol. 5. No. 5, pp. 7-8.
  3. ↑ "The Mesquite Bean As a War Crop," in New Mexico Farm Courier (1917). Vol. 5, No. 9, pp. 9-10.
  4. ↑ Foster. L., "Feeding Value of Mesquite Beans," in New Mexico Farm Courier (1916), Vol. 4, No. 9, pp. 4-5.
  5. ↑ Brown, W. R., "The Mesquite (Prosopis Juliflora) a Famine Fodder for the Karroo," in Journal of the Department Agriculture (Union of South Africa) (1923), Vol. 6, pp. 62-67.
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