Guar (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba) is an annual legume native to the arid regions of the Indian subcontinent. While it has been grown as a vegetable and animal feed crop for centuries, its global significance today comes almost entirely from guar gum, a galactomannan polysaccharide extracted from the seed endosperm.
Guar gum appears in an enormous range of processed foods — ice cream, sauces, baked goods, dairy products, and gluten-free formulations — where it acts as a thickener, stabiliser, and emulsifier. India produces around 80% of the world’s guar supply. The crop also has significant industrial uses in oil and gas drilling, textiles, and paper manufacturing.
Despite its ubiquity as an additive, guar is rarely encountered as a whole food outside South Asian cuisines, where young pods are sometimes eaten as a green vegetable.
How it's produced
Guar is a drought-tolerant crop suited to semi-arid climates with sandy soils. It is grown as a rain-fed kharif (monsoon season) crop across Rajasthan, Gujarat, and parts of Pakistan, with smaller plantings in the United States, Australia, and Africa. The plant fixes nitrogen, making it a useful rotation crop.
After the pods mature and dry on the plant, they are harvested and threshed to extract the seeds. For gum production, the seeds are dehusked, split to separate the endosperm from the germ, and then ground into a fine powder. The resulting guar gum powder is graded by viscosity and particle size for different food and industrial applications.
What it costs the planet (per kilo)
≈ Estimated from its category — typical for vegetables, not measured for this item yet. Sources & methods →
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