The researchers compared two types of bean plants to see how their growth habits and spacing between rows affected how much sunlight they could capture for photosynthesis. They found that the climbing bean plants intercepted more sunlight than the bush bean plants, especially when the plants were at a similar leaf coverage stage. The climbing beans had a taller canopy that caught almost 50% more sunlight than the bush beans. The bush beans did better at closer row spacing, but the climbing beans did better at wider row spacing. Overall, the climbing beans were better at capturing sunlight for longer periods, but they took longer to start producing beans.