Major projects are tackling the urgent global need to increase the contribution of legumes to food security and nitrogen fixation in cropping systems. Such work is multidisciplinary, integrative across disciplines and involves the active participation of a range of stakeholders.
Legume Futures is a project in this category. To see others, click a link in the list below to move down the page for a brief description of each project and web link.
- N2Africa
- Fabatropimed Africa and the Mediterranean Basin
N2Africa Putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers in Africa
'N2AFRICA is a large scale, science research project focused on putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers growing legume crops in Africa.'
The project is funded over four years by major international foundations through a grant to Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Partners in Africa including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
Aims are to identify niches for N-fixing legumes; testing legumes for food, feed and improved soil fertility; promoting improved varieties and inoculum; developing and strengthening research capacity and technology dissemination; and delivering improved varieties to smallholder farmers.
Web site: https://n2africa.org/
email: n2africa@wur.nl
Fabatropimed
Ecological services of legumes for nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical cycles and c sequestration in cereal cropping systems in Africa and the Mediterranean basin.
The target of Fabatropimed (December 2010 - March 2015) is to enhance the benefit of pulses for cereal growing systems and the environment, by (1) reducing the use of mineral-based fertilisers and increasing carbon-dioxide sequestration, and by (2) promoting the interaction between soil micro-organisms for plants to acquire and use nitrogen and phosphorus. Fabatropimed is carrying out cooperative research in six agro-ecosystems using agricultural and environmental diagnostics (WP1) together with a sustainability and innovation survey (WP5), in interdisciplinarity with monitoring the C, N and P soil cycles and the atmosphere (WP2). (From the project description - see web link below.)
Also listed under Projects/ecosystem_services
Summary of the project adapted from the Agropolis Fondation web page, Word file, 32 kb: Fabatropimed
Contact: DREVON Jean-Jacques, email - jean-jacques.drevon@supagro.inra.fr
Web link, in english: Agropolis Fondation web page
