Grain legumes are cultivated for their seeds, primarily for human consumption. However, legumes are also grown for animal feed, such as alfalfa and clovers, and used to produce oils for industrial uses, such as soybean.

A key characteristic of legumes is their ability to ‘fix’ atmospheric nitrogen, in conjunction with rhizobium bacteria, helping to maintain soil fertility. They play a minor role on the international agricultural markets but are of tremendous importance for regional economies and food security.

Many grain legumes are covered by the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and Bioversity has prepared crop descriptors for many of them.

Find out about legumes by scrolling down or clicking on the links below.

Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea)
Bean (Phaseolus spp.)
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum)
Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata)
Faba bean (Vicia faba)
Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus)
Pea (Pisum sativum)
Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan)

Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea)
Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) is an indigenous African crop that has been cultivated for centuries from Senegal to Kenya, and from the Sahara to South Africa and Madagascar. Despite being drought tolerant, Bambara groundnut has largely been ignored by the scientific community, which regards it as a poor man's crop.

Publications
Bamabara Groundnut

Descriptors for Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea)
Descripteurs du pois bambara (Vigna subterranea)

Promotion of Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea): latest developments of Bambara groundnut research

An ecogeographic study. African vigna.
Systematic and Ecogeographic Studies on Crop Genepools 11.

Links
BAMNET - The International Bambara Groundnut Network

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Bean (Phaseolus spp.)
Beans make an essential contribution to human nutrition. In many parts of Latin America and Africa, beans are considered the ‘meat of the poor’. Their protein content is roughly double that of most cereals and they are rich in essential micronutrients, such as iron and folic acid (one of the B vitamins especially important for pregnant woman). Beans complement carbohydrate-rich food plants, such as maize or cassava, and the combination of beans with the main staple crops provides food security for millions.

Beans were domesticated in south and central America, and spread  rapidly around the world after Europeans first visited the Americas in the 15th century. Since arriving in Africa the bean has become adapted to many different growing conditions and environments, and Africa is now considered to be a secondary centre for genetic diversity of this crop. In Africa, women on small farms are the primary bean growers. Currently beans are grown on a significant scale in at least 117 countries.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)bean collection, in Colombia, contains over 40 000 accessions, of which 26 500 are cultivated Phaseolus vulgaris, or common bean. About 1300 samples are wild species of P. vulgaris. The rest are distant relatives. At CIAT major efforts are being put into breeding for traits that are useful to poor farmers in marginal areas, including disease and drought resistance.

Information source: Global Crop Diversity Trust

Publications
Wild Phaseolus Ecogeography in the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico: Aereogeographic Techniques for Targeting and Conserving Species Diversity.
Systematic and Ecogeographic Studies on Crop Genepools 5

Ecogeography, demography, diversity and conservation of Phaseolus lunatus L. in the Central Valley of Costa Rica
Systematic and Ecogeographic Studies on Crop Genepools 12

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Chickpea (Cicer arietinum)
Chickpea is grown and eaten in large quantities from South-East Asia across the Indian subcontinent and throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean countries, playing important nutritional and cultural roles. More recently it has grown in popularity in Africa and Latin America; in 2005 there was significant production in 54 countries.

Chickpea has one of the highest nutritional compositions of any dry edible legume—on average, chickpea seed contains 23 percent protein. Chickpea needs few expensive or environmentally detrimental inputs, and in addition performs an important role for the agro-ecosystem, as it enhances the amount of nitrogen available for subsequent crops if the plants are ploughed under as organic fertilizer after harvest.

According to FAO there are about 70 000 chickpea accessions held in seed banks around the world. By far the largest collections are at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in India and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), in Syria.

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Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata)
Cowpea is a tough West African crop, popular throughout the dry tropics and subtropics. It thrives in sandy soils and tolerates drought better than most crops.

It is a multipurpose crop, grown for both humans and livestock. The peas, the fresh pods and the fresh leaves all make excellent vegetables with a high nutritional value. In dry form the grains are eaten boiled or as a snack. Cowpea is a high quality legume for livestock feed. It can also be used for erosion control.

Cowpea plays an important role in many farming systems throughout the tropics. Subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa usually intercrop their cowpea with maize, sorghum, millet and cassava. In rice farming, cowpea can be grown either before or after a crop to increase food production from a land area. Cowpea enriches the soil with nitrogen, helps break the pest and disease cycle that occurs in continuous cropping, and is an additional source of farm income.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) holds the world's largest collection of cowpea germplasm in its genebank, with more than 16 000 accessions. FAO’s State of The World’s Plant Genetic Resources estimated a total holding of 85 000 samples in genebanks worldwide.

Elsewhere on the site
Cowpea's importance keeps it safe in Malawi

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Faba bean (Vicia faba)
Also known as broad bean, horse bean, field bean and tick bean, the faba bean is one of the easiest crops to grow. It grows well at high altitudes in the subtropics as well as in temperate regions.

The faba bean was probably domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and has been a part of eastern Mediterranean diet for some 8000 years. From here the faba bean spread around the world and is now, according to FAO, grown in 58 countries. The largest producer of faba bean is China, followed by Ethiopia and Egypt.

Faba bean is eaten fresh, dried or canned, and different varieties have many distinct culinary uses. Large-seeded cultivars are used as a vegetable, and roasted seeds are eaten like peanuts in India. However, most of world production is now for animal feed. The straw is also used for brick making and as a fuel in parts of Sudan and Ethiopia.

The world’s largest collections of faba bean diversity are found at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria, and at the Vavilov Institute in Russia. According to the FAO there are about 26 000 samples of faba bean held in genebanks around the world.

Publications
An ecogeographical study of Vicia subgenus Vicia

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Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus)
Grass pea is an important crop of economic significance in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. It is cultivated and extensively naturalized in central, south and eastern Europe (from Germany south to Portugal and Spain and east to the Balkans and southern Russia), in Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus and in West Asia and North Africa (Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Syria).

The grass pea is endowed with many properties that combine to make it an attractive food crop in drought-stricken, rain-fed areas where soil quality is poor and extreme environmental conditions prevail. Despite its tolerance of drought it is not affected by excessive rainfall and can be grown on land subject to flooding. It has a very hardy and penetrating root system and therefore can be grown on a wide range of soil types, including very poor soil and heavy clays. This hardiness, together with its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, makes the crop one that seems designed to grow under adverse conditions. The grass pea is more resistant to many pests, including storage insects, than most legumes. But all is not completely rosy; grass pea seeds contain a neurotoxin, beta-N-L-alpha-beta-diaminopropionic acid, or ODAP. This can cause permanent paralysis if a person eats too much grass pea—which can happen in droughts when little else is available. More work is needed to identify low-ODAP lines that are safer to use as human food.

Scientists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria, have had some success in this direction, developing low-ODAP cultivars. The work of the ICARDA scientists relied on the world's largest collection of grass pea and grass pea relatives in their seedbank in Syria, where more than 3000 samples are held for use in further efforts to get the best out of this tough crop.

Information source: Grass pea, Lathyrus sativus L. (see publication below)

Publications
Grass pea, Lathyrus sativus L.

Lathyrus Genetic Resources Network
Proceedings of a IPGRI-ICARDA-ICAR Regional Working Group Meeting
8-10 December 1997, New Delhi, India

Lathyrus Genetic Resources in Asia
Proceedings of a Regional Workshop
Raipur, India, 27-29 December 1995

Lathyrus germplasm collections directory

Descriptors for Lathyrus spp.

Links
Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture: Lathyrus Lathyrism Newsletters

ECPGR Lathyrus Database

A bibliographic database for the genus Lathyrus

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Pea (Pisum sativum)
Pea was one of the first plants to be domesticated, some 10 000 years ago in the Middle East, from where it spread into most of the temperate Old World. Canada is now the largest producer of peas, followe by China, France and Russia. Pea is produced in significant quantities in over 90 countries, and is now the fourth most important food legume in terms of world production.

Peas and genetics go a long way back. In the 1860s the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel famously experimented with crossing pea plants, resulting in his understanding of how traits are inherited. This was, in turn, rediscovered and labeled 'genetics' at the beginning of the 20th century. Genetics is now the fundamental science both for understanding natural evolution and for plant breeding. So when we now talk about genetic diversity, and varieties of food plants, we owe much to those peas in the backyard of Mendel's monastery.

Peas come in many different shapes and colours; some are low-growing while some vining varieties grow thin tendrils that coil around any available support and can climb to be 1–2 m high.

Several cultivars of peas are eaten with the pod, and are known as mangetout, edible pod peas, snow peas, sugarsnap peas, sugar peas or snap peas. They are especially characteristic of East Asian cuisine.

FAO documents more than 75 000 accessions held in genebanks around the world. The largest collections are in Australia, Italy and the UK. Breeders are using these collections as they focus on resistance to different diseases to boost the yield of the crop.

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Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan)
Pigeon pea is an important crop for small-scale farmers in semi-arid areas. It is drought resistant and can be grown in areas with less than 650 mm annual rainfall, and has low input requirements.

Pigeon pea was probably domesticated on the Indian subcontinent. Today pigeon pea is widely cultivated throughout all tropical and semi-tropical regions. About 75 percent of the production is in India, but it is an important crop in eastern Africa and Central America.

Pigeon peas contain vitamin B and high levels of protein with important amino acids. Farmers most commonly cultivate pigeon pea in association with grain crops such as maize, sorghum or millet, and when consumed in combination with cereals, pigeon peas contribute to a well balanced human diet. It is described as having a nutty, earthy flavour.

The pigeon pea has a range of uses. The seeds can be eaten fresh, as a vegetable, or dry in dhal—a South Asian staple. The seed pods and the leaves are fed to livestock, and the plant functions as a ‘living fence’ and provides ‘green manure’ in many home gardens. The dry stems are used as both fuel and construction material.

There is a great diversity of local cultivars. In India, in particular, there are pigeon peas whose taste ranges from bitter to sweet, and whose colour varies from black to creamy white. The crop exists both in annual and perennial forms.

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