With the European Green Deal, the EU has committed to transition to carbon-neutral and sustainable systems of agriculture. LegumeLegacy aims to adapt existing mixed or ruminant based production systems, using state of the art knowledge from ecology, agronomy, statistics and other fields to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient inputs and leaching, while increasing carbon stocks, biodiversity and yield stability.
To achieve this, a distinctive strategy of LegumeLegacy includes conducting a common crop rotation experiment across multiple LegumeLegacy sites; 11 Doctoral Researchers will collaborate on the common experiment and have their own distinctive and complementary research objectives. The overall aim is to identify solutions for improving the sustainability of crop rotation systems. In the common experiment, grassland plots of varying diversity of six species (two grasses, two legumes, two herbs, selected for complementary functional traits) will be established as a grassland ley, grown, and terminated; the grassland leys will be followed by a wheat or barley crop. The effect of the diversity of the grassland ley on the performance of the crop rotation will be evaluated by measurement of yield, quality and environmental performance. LegumeLegacy will recommend the design of grassland leys within crop rotations that optimise agronomic and environmental performance; the multisite experiment will generalise the conclusion and its implementation potential across Europe.
LegumeLegacy partners with LegacyNet (
https://legacynet.scss.tcd.ie/(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)) a voluntary international network of field experiments studying crop rotations across a wide climatic gradient. Data from LegacyNet will be analysed by LegumeLegacy researchers to identify trends across climatic gradients.
LegumeLegacy will train a cohort of 11 Doctoral Researchers into a new generation of future leaders who will have the capacity to develop and deploy interdisciplinary and data-driven sustainable practices in the agricultural sector. With a training programme that includes statistics, specialised research skills, targeted transferable skills and scientific co-operation within the international LegacyNet network, this cohort of future leaders will be equipped with professional skills for a range of associated disciplines in industry or academia.
