The wide spread occurrence of malnutrition in affecting the diet of many people in developing countries of the world has raised the importance of legumes as excellent but cheap source of protein.The objective of the present study is to evaluate the proximate, physical and mechanical characterization of black bean (Pheosolus vulgaris) to determine the nutritional values.The physical, mechanical properties of black bean, protein, crude fibre, ash, moisture content and carbohydrates were determined by standard procedures.The moisture content range from 10.64 to 18.22% db, the dimensions of the major length, width and thickness were 10.32 to 10.93mm, 6.79 to 7.06mm and 4.95 to 5.70mm respectively. In the above moisture range, the average arithmetic and geometric value increased from 7.35mm2 to 7.90mm2 and 7.03 to 7.61mm2 respectively. The sphericity decreased linearly from 0.6988 to 0.680, the surface area and the volume of the seeds increased linearly from 155.09mm2 to 181.69mm2 and 21.7 to 25.57. However, all the mechanical properties decreased as the moisture content increased from 10.64 to 18.22% db. The determined engineering properties are very important and are the basis for the design of post-harvest handling, processing and storage system. In all, some of the seeds tested showed that there are significant differences in some of the properties while some are not reliable.

Keywords: Characterization, dimension, proximate, physical, mechanical, nutrition, designing, and regression.