Valorisation of ecosystem services provided by legume crops

The European Union and Associated Countries’ arable agricultural systems are often characterised by short rotations or monocultures, leading to problems such as higher pest pressure, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility or loss of biodiversity. As a result, there is an imperative need to reveal the full potential of diversification of cropping systems, with the aim of improving productivity, and supporting the development of resource-efficient and sustainable value chains. Protein-rich plants, and in particular legumes, play a key role in cross-cutting issues related to crop rotation, sustainable soil management and closing nutrient cycles. They have the potential to enable the environmental sustainability, productivity, climate neutrality and resilience of farming systems, by increasing the provision of ecosystem services while restoring and enhancing biodiversity and generating fair economic returns for farmers.

The environmental, nutritional and economic benefits that leguminous crops bring to all players of the value chain, provide an opportunity for further developing the leguminous crop sector in the EU and Associated Countries. This could eventually contribute to reducing the EU’s dependency on imports of nitrogen fertilisers and protein crops for feed, while support meeting the objectives of farm to fork strategy.

While the direct benefits of legume crops as food and feed are usually recognized, their environmental and economic benefits derived from the increase of the provision of the ecosystem services they provide, are less understood and not valorised. The focus of this proposal is on the economic and environmental benefits of the production of legume crops, regardless their cultivation purpose is for food or for feed uses.

Proposals should:

• Increase knowledge on the different and complementary benefits from the use of legume crops (both annual and perennials) in the provision of ecosystem and environmental services, such as the value of the nitrogen transfer to succeeding or companion crops (including in grassland systems), the efficiency of different legume varieties to fix nitrogen in the soil in function of specific conditions (e.g. soil type, established rhizobia consortia), the role of legume crops for wind protection, water runoff or other erosion control strategies.
• Explore new synergies between combinations of legume crops and other crops that can benefit from nitrogen fixation, in systems like crop rotations, intercropping, mixed cropping, cover cropping or agroforestry.
• Evaluate the global competitiveness of legume crops cultivation in different contexts of the EU and Associated Countries (considering relevant economic, social or environmental aspects) through a cost-benefit analyses and life-cycle environmental assessment, versus imports from third countries.
• Develop tools or methods that allow to measure and quantify in economic terms the value of the nitrogen transfer between various crops, for different crop combinations, in relation to environmental aspects such as the reduction of use of nitrogen fertiliser, carbon emissions, pollution, nitrogen losses, reduced GHG emissions, pest/weed/disease management and increased crop and microbial diversity.
• Identify and remove the barriers to crop diversification or to crop rotation. Provide indicators so that farmers and advisors are better equipped to evaluate the benefits of growing legumes, including for weed management, as well as recommendations to strengthen crop diversification and longer rotation cycles with environmentally beneficial crops.
• Promote the engagement of downstream actors in new value chains based on crop diversification. This should facilitate the market penetration of leguminous crops, linked to market outlets and consumers demand and influence the transition towards more sustainable and healthy food and feed systems.
• Include minor or underutilised legume crops (mostly perennial but also annual varieties) that are not the frequent objects of research activities. Consider their potential for enhancing the ecosystem and economic services not only due to their key role in sustainable soil management and closing nutrient cycles (likewise major legume crops) but also due to their adaptation to agroecological niches/marginal area and capability to withstand abiotic and abiotic stress and climate change.
• Generate capacity building material, organize trainings or knowledge sharing activities, including the development of guidelines (e.g. booklets, decision-support tools) to foment the dissemination, uptake and upscale of results.

Proposals should include a dedicated task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will collaborate with other projects funded under this or other topics (i.e. but not limited to projects funded under topic HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01-02 and HORIZON-CL6-2022-BIODIV-02-02-two-stage), and ensure synergy with relevant activities carried out under other initiatives in Horizon Europe such as the upcoming partnership on agroecology[[ ‘European Partnership accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures’ at: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/european-partnerships-horizon-europe/candidates-food-security_en]] and the Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”[[ https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe/soil-health-and-food_en]]. Proposals should also seek potential synergies with and capitalise on the results of past or ongoing projects both in the EU and beyond (e.g. Horizon 2020 projects LegValue[[ www.legvalue.eu]] and TRUE[[ www.true-project.eu]], the thematic network 'Legumes Translated’[[ www.legumestranslated.eu]] or SusCrop ERA-NET project[[ https://www.suscrop.eu/projects-first-call/legumegap]]).

Proposals should benefit both the conventional and the organic farming sectors.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged. This topic should involve the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.