3:20pm UK, Thursday November 03, 2005

They've been a staple in student diets and English fry-ups for years, but beans have always had one big drawback - their dramatic effect on human wind production.

Now a Cambridge boffin has developed fart-free varieties to the relief of baked bean fans and their families everywhere.

180 baked beans

Fart-free dinners beckon

Dr Colin Leakey - that is his real name - has just produced his first six-tonne harvest of a new strain of South American manteca beans.

The original manteca beans were famed for their gas-less qualities and prized by the upper-classes because they could be served up at stench-free dinner parties.

Dr Leakey, 71, has even developed his own 'fart-ometer' to measure the amount of flatulence produced by manteca beans compared to other varieties.

"In physiological and replicated tests, the manteca beans produced no more flatulence than muesli or any other normal (non-bean) grain crop," he said.

The agricultural consultant now hopes an organic food company will use his beans in their frozen food products.

They have already been grown in industrial-scale trials abroad and are sold in French supermarkets as 'Haricots non-flatulent'.

"I call the beans 'social beans' and am confident that they are relatively wind-free," he said.