Australia is on track to record its greatest ever harvest of mung beans, marking a remarkable change for a crop once called mongrel beans.

This year's crop is the biggest on record by about a third, with up to 125,000 hectares of land planted.

"We're sincerely hoping we get 125,000 tonnes," said Paul McIntosh from Pulse Australia, an industry organisation that promotes the farming and selling of the dried seeds of legumes.

"We're better at it [farming mung beans], the price from overseas where most of the crop goes is good and strong, but basically we're better at it."

Years of research and effort have transformed what were once called mongrel beans into what have been dubbed money beans, by developing new varieties that are easier to grow, more disease resistant and yield more.

"Greater harvestability, so the plants are taller, they carry their pods higher in the canopy, and they're hanging onto their pods and much less prone to shattering than varieties used to be in the past," said Col Douglas, a senior plant breeder with Queensland's Agriculture Department.

At the Hermitage research station at Warwick on Queensland's Darling Downs, he heads the National Mungbean Improvement Program with backing from the federal and Queensland governments and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

"Queensland farmers are some of the best pulse growers in the world, and despite the fact that they wouldn't touch mung beans with a barge pole, they're sort of steak and veg guys," Mr Douglas said.

"So in 2008 the program released two varieties — the first of those was Crystal. So Crystal represented a 20 per cent yield gain over the previous variety that had been grown for maybe 10 or 15 years.

"And in plant breeding terms, that's a quantum leap. That really gave a shot in the arm for industry to adopt mung beans and increase production."

Nearly all of Australia's mung beans go overseas, to places including South East Asia.

"Mostly for sprouts, mostly we export them overseas ... right at the present moment and many years before this, we've exported about 98 per cent of them overseas for the sprouting market in the Asian countries," said Mr McIntosh.

An alternative to peanut butter?

But in Australia mung beans are also being used in a surprising way — to make a nut-free alternative to peanut butter and Nutella.

In a small factory on Brisbane's outskirts, mung beans are milled and treated in a secret process by the start-up company Foods from the Earth before being made into pastes.

"It's proprietary information," said the firm's general manager Michele Cooper.

"But I can tell you we do use a heat treatment process which is very gentle on the bean itself and as a result of that it maintains nutritional integrity — so your protein levels, are maintained, your vitamins are maintained and your minerals are still as strong as they would be in the raw product.

"As nut bans expand nationally and internationally, that feeling of isolation in schools of children who can't have nuts and other children still want to get their protein from nut spreads, they can now use our products.

"Adding value, keeping the value here, in Australia as well before it goes overseas, more value for the farmers, more dollars here in Australia."