cgiar research program on grain legumes, value for money

Grain LegumesValue for Money Proposition

CGIAR is a global research partnership for a food secure future

Theory of ChangeTimelines and relationships between research results, products and outcomes is illustrated graphically.

PartnersLed by ICRISAT with CIAT, ICARDA and IITA in partnership with: Generation Challenge Program (GCP) Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Turkish General Directorate of Agricultural Research (GDAR) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Peanut and Mycotoxin National agricultural research and extension systems in Africa, Asia and Latin America National and international public and private sector research and development partners

Results

Adoption of short duration chickpea in Andhra Pradesh, India. Photo: Pooran Gaur, ICRISAT

Legumes provide high quality, protein rich food with a uniquely low environmental impact. The dietary benefits of major components of the seeds are complemented by micronutrients and other bioactive compounds.

Legumes fetch good prices yet tend to be farmed on the least productive land (which they enrich), and thus they can benefit resource poor farmers. The CRP Grain Legumes gathers researchers working on the major legume crops of the developing world who can benefit from the common biology and shared market systems. This program represents a significant component of the worlds research on these systems.

One ‘product line’ relates to the possibility of developing varieties, agronomic practice, and market systems that can replace those of rice fallow. This would represent de novo productivity and has the potential to reach in excess of 2 M ha in SSEA alone.

Research proposition

GenderThe gender strategy includes three main elements:

SLO

Drought resistant cowpeas that include resistance to parasitic weeds have been released in Tanzania and Burkina Faso. Improved short-duration and drought tolerant groundnut varieties were introduced into 12 target countries.

Six kabuli chickpea and four lentil varieties, resistant to Ascochyta blight and amenable to machine harvest have been released; the Desi variety JG 14 yielded 30% higher than the control in on-farm tests. Early maturing lentil varieties, one each in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and India have been released for cultivation.

Heat-tolerant cultivar upscaling includes the establishment of village seed hubs for quality assured seed distribution.

LessonsChallenges

1. External factors have large consequences for the adoption of technologies, and this is heterogeneous by location.

2. Data on the adoption of technologies is difficult to collect, as is the attribution of behavioral change to specific causes within, or external to, the CRP.

Opportunities1. Comparative genomics in legumes is especially powerful because these diverged

within the last 55 million years and the gene content and order is very conservative. Genome sequence data is available or being generated.

2. Legumes share features of agronomy (eg place in rotations).

3. Legume seed systems are similar, the seeds are typically quite large and multiplication rates are low

Key contacts Product Line CoordinatorsPL1 - Drought & low-P tolerant common bean, cowpea & soybean Dr Steve Beebe (CIAT) s.beebe@cgiar.org PL2 - Heat tolerant chickpea, common bean, faba bean and lentil Dr Michel Ghanem (ICARDA) m.ghanem@cgiar.orgPL3 - Short-duration, drought tolerant & aflatoxin-free groundnut Dr Patrick Okori (ICRISAT- Malawi) p.okori@cgiar.orgPL4 - High N-fixing chickpea, common bean, faba bean &soybean Dr SK Chaturvedi (IIPR, Kanpur) chaturvedi5463@yahoo.co.inPL5 - Insect-smart chickpea, cowpea, & pigeonpea prod. systems Dr Manuele Tamo (IITA) m.tamo@cgiar.orgPL6 - Extra-early maturing chickpea and lentil varieties Dr Shiv Kumar Argawal (ICARDA) sk.agrawal@cgiar.orgPL7 - Herbicide tolerant machine-harvestable chickpea, faba bean and lentil varieties Dr Pooran Gaur (ICRISAT - India) p.gaur@cgiar.orgPL8 - Pigeonpea hybrid and management practices Dr Rajeev Varshney (ICRISAT - India) r.k.varshney@cgiar.org

Gender Specialist Dr Chanda Goodrich c.goodrich@cgiar.orgCommunication Manager Satish Nagaraji n.satish@cgiar.orgDirector Dr Noel Ellis n.ellis@cgiar.org

Breeder partnership for lentil in Bangladesh. Photo: Shiv Kumar Agrawal, ICARDA

LED BY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH and public and private institutes and organizations, governments, and farmers worldwide Science with a human face

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Nutrition& Health

Food Security

Improved nutrition & health

Enhancedenv. sustainabilityReduced

rural povertyProductivity

Income

Environment

Improved food security

Strategic research to identify targets with a gender specific outcome.

Gender research analyses the impact of gender on CRP outputs.

Gender actions steps to attend to internal gender issues.

October 2013