Plea for help over legume crops

Farmers are being asked to help researchers identify the climatic, genetic and management factors affecting yield variability in legume crops such as peas and beans which exhibit notoriously unreliable yields, with large variations between seasons.

A major Europe-wide project is set to investigate the roots of this variation as it remains a major factor in the reluctance of farmers to grow this sort of crop, despite a massive shortfall in protein crop production across the EU.

And Researchers from

Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) who are involved in the study this week said that they wanted farmers to take part in a survey which will help highlight the difficulties associated with growing the crop and which will hopefully lead to the design of novel cultivars and management strategies to reduce the variability in the future.

Christine Watson, Professor of Agricultural Systems at SRUC, said that the EU imported 30 to 40 million tonnes of soya bean and meal annually in order to meet its requirements for plant protein – but only grew 2.5 million tonnes of soya bean and 5.5 million tonnes of other pulse seeds:

“We know that yields of major crops in Europe are now stagnating because of agronomic problems in cropping systems dominated by cereals.

“We also know growing legumes as a break is one approach to addressing this,” said Watson who added that the survey would be confidential and grouped with the results from eight other EU countries.