Legumes are a critical component of global food and feed systems and are particularly important in the tropics where protein energy malnutrition is as-

sociated with millions of deaths each year. Legumes are attractive as a food security and environment-friendly crop because of their symbiotic relationship with soil microbes to fix atmospheric nitrogen, thereby decreasing the reliance on nitrogen fertilizer inputs and leading to improved produc-tion system sustainability.

Long used as traditional food and forage, legumes can serve as a source of dietary protein, flour, vegetable oil, a component of animal diets, a source of soil fertility as a green manure or intercrop, and have a myriad of indus-trial uses. However, many important legumes are not well adapted to tropical environments, and many other tropical

legumes as so low yielding that they do not compete well in production priority with higher-yielding grain crops.

To help raise legume production and yields in the trop-ics, the Tropical Legume Community of ASA provides a forum for advancing and sharing research on all aspects of tropical legumes including breeding, germplasm ad-aptation, agronomic production, nutrition, fertility needs, and smallholder access to legume seed. The community will assist in bringing together both U.S. and international

Membership

Know Your Community: Tropical Legumesby Kerry Clark

doi:10.2134/csa2016-61-12-6

Above: A doubled up legume technology with pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) as an over story crop and peanut (Arachis hypogaea) as the understory. On-farm experiments are un-der way in Malawi evaluating the competition, impact on re-sources, and production of fuel wood, fodder, and nutritious food products. Photo by Sieg Snapp. Top right: Perennial peanut cover crop in a banana plantation. Photo by Virupax Baligar. Middle right: Soybean farming in Nigeria. Photo by Akinwale Akinsitan. Bottom right: Soybean production in Ghana. Photo by Dennis Thompson.

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18 CSA News December 2016

News & Perspectives

Published December 16, 2016

Good for Yields and the Bottom Line?Another biofortification pioneer, Ross M. Welch, emeri-

tus professor from Cornell University, remembers the first conversation he had with Bouis about the potential for biofortified crops. Bouis asked many researchers whether biofortification was possible. More often than not, the an-swer was yield would decrease at the expense of increased nutrients. Welch believed biofortifying crops could not only benefit human health, but also increase yields for some crops. Bouis and Welch, along with Robin Graham, Univer-sity of Adelaide, Australia, began researching biofortifica-tion.

According to Bouis, “Ross and Robin had published research to show that wheat seeds with higher zinc content were more vigorous and viable. Seedlings got a better start. Yields were higher.”

From Bouis’ perspective, having the plants do some of the fortification work would save time and money. “Billions of dollars are spent annually in developing countries on supplementation and commercial fortification to address the problem of micronutrient malnutrition. Benefit-cost ratios are among the highest of any intervention that can be made. However, the same recurrent expenditures are incurred year after year.” Biofortification could avoid some of those recurring expenses.

HarvestPlus: Serving the Poorest of the PoorOver a decade of grant-writing and meetings ensued.

The persistence paid off when the team secured funding “to set up the HarvestPlus organization that continues to breed, release, and distribute biofortified crops to farmers of the poorest of the poor in the developing world,” Welch says. “I am very proud of our accomplishments over the past 23 years. The award of the World Food Prize to Howdy now makes all our hard work worthwhile, and I hope that HarvestPlus continues to grow and spread nutritious staple food crops to the world.”

Bouis adds, “I was honored to accept the World Food Prize on behalf of HarvestPlus staff and collaborating scientists, implementers, and their respective organizations. After many years, our collective effort has positioned us to aspire to reach a billion people by 2030. The prize gives us the visibility we need for scaling up and mainstreaming biofortified crops.”

One type of crop Bouis has worked to biofortify is pulse crops. Pulses, such as dried beans and peas, are an impor-tant staple crop in many parts of the world. This year, CSSA has been celebrating the UN-declared International Year of Pulses. For more information about the CSSA’s activities during this year, visit www.crops.org/iyp. To find out more about the World Food Prize, visit www.worldfoodprize.org.

S.V. Fisk, Director of Public and Science Communications

researchers on tropical legumes to build collaborations and networks that we hope will lead to the strengthening of tropical legume research and funding opportunities.

In our community debut at the 2016 ASA Annual Meet-ing in Phoenix, oral and poster presentations covered the topics of legume nutrients, common bean physiology, green manure intercropping, seed policies, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, and building soybean breeding and evaluation programs in Africa.

Some examples of community members working in tropical legumes include Julie Grossman at the University of Minnesota, who is exploring ways to better manage plant–soil–microbe relationships in order to enhance soil fertility with the ultimate goal of developing sustainable food production systems. Virupax Baligar is conducting collaborative research on perennial legume cover crops in Cacao plantations at the USDA-ARS Beltsville, MD Agricul-tural Research Center and research institutes in Brazil and Peru. At Michigan State University, the Sieg Snapp lab and a team of national and international collaborators have con-ducted action agroecology research for more than a decade with legumes in Africa where they have found sustainable production practices such as rotation with food legumes to be limited in scope.

At Texas A&M, Forrest Smith and Jim Muir focus on domesticating native legumes for regional use as forage, rangeland reseeding, prairie restoration, wildlife plantings, roadside revegetation, and ornamentals and have con-ducted similar efforts in northeastern Brazil and southern Mozambique. Kristin Bilyeu, with the USDA-ARS in Co-lumbia, MO, and Dennis Thompson and Brian Diers, with the University of Illinois, are collaborators in the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab, which helps to provide ac-cess to the global soybean revolution to African smallholder farmers.

Most of these programs have collaborations with re-searchers in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and many U.S.-based labs are actively involved in training students from tropical countries in legume breeding, physi-ology, and agronomy. Although the majority of members of the Tropical Legumes Community are based in the United States, we are actively seeking new members from research programs in the tropics. We welcome suggestions on future programming to our leadership, Kerry Clark, chair, Univer-sity of Missouri (clarkk@missouri.edu), and Dennis Thomp-son, vice-chair, University of Illinois (dennis@ dennisthompsonllc.com).

K. Clark, Chair of the Tropical Legumes Community of ASA

Tropical Legumescontinued from page 18

December 2016 CSA News 21