Helping Europe grow more legumes
Legume crops are extremely important in agriculture: they fix a key nutrient (atmospheric nitrogen) into the soil, which fertilises the medium for other plants. Legumes also break cycles of disease affecting cereal crops. Nevertheless, legumes are under-utilised in European agriculture, a situation the EU-funded project 'Legume-supported cropping systems for Europe' (LEGUME-FUTURES) aimed to rectify. Via a set of 9 objectives, the consortium planned 18 field trials across Europe, leading to new cropping systems. The endeavour ran over four years to February 2014. The work established Europe-wide sites for experimental legume cropping. The resulting data were processed at an Internet data resource centre, supporting analysis of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of legume-based production. The study also assessed available genetic material. From such information, the team developed a new understanding of the role of legumes in European farming and the basis for suggesting improvements. Project outcomes include new cropping system designs, case studies, enhanced access to information, and assessment of environmental and socioeconomic impacts. The team also assessed non-traditional uses of legumes. A core part of the consortium's work was knowledge interaction and research delivery. The resulting communications and delivery strategy helped match the effective delivery of research results to user needs, using a variety of delivery methods. These included farm demonstrations, conferences and workshops, a web portal and academic publications. LEGUME-FUTURES helped to redefine the role of legumes in European cropping. The project also studied the economic and environmental considerations of farming strategies.
Keywords
Legumes, cropping, agriculture, environmental impacts, farming
