GRAIN LEGUMES - New Strategies to Improve Grain Legumes for Food and Feed

The EU faces the challenge of providing high quality protein for both animal and human consumption. Europe currently imports about 70% of its plant protein yet much of this could be derived from EU grown Grain Legumes. In the human diet Grain Legumes are beneficial and they provide an excellent source of high quality plant protein for animal feed. Furthermore, legume use in arable crop rotations reduces the need for fertiliser application and acts as a break-crop, reducing the need for pest and disease control. Together this is a unique combination of benefit to the environment.
Nevertheless, grain legumes are underused by European farmers mainly because of yield inconsistency. Additionally there has been insufficient research into the effects of legume seed composition on the quality of animal feed. <P>The GRAIN LEGUMES Integrated Project will mobilise and integrate European scientific research on grain legumes to solving these problems, by addressing the following objectives;<OL> <LI> To identify optimal parameters for legumes in feed quality and safety, including GMOs while using legumes to develop healthy and sustainable agriculture.<LI> To investigate variation in grain legume seed composition and the factors affecting it. <LI> To develop new genetic, genomic, post-genomic and bioinformatic tools to improve and sustain grain legume seed production and quality. </ol> To achieve these objectives the project will integrate an ambitious combination of approaches, including biochemistry, plant & crop physiology, agronomy, plant genomics & breeding, and animal nutritional studies. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the use of state-of-the-art methodologies including genomics and bioinformatics, together with transcriptomics and metabolomics.