Perennial Legumes

The first trials in spring 2017 explored alfalfa and lupin as potential new grain legumes and Kura clover as a perennial companion legume. Since then, the team has continued to work closely with the Global Inventory Project (PAPGI) team to identify other perennial legume candidates for domestication. Today the group is expanding breeding and agronomic research studying intermediate wheatgrass intercrops with legumes and studying sainfoin as a perennial grain legume candidate. We are working closely with the PAPGI team to identify promising perennial legume species and to develop criteria for evaluating their agronomic potential as perennial crop plants using the pipeline strategy for domestication as a guide.

• Expand agronomic knowledge about dual-purpose intermediate wheatgrass + legume intercropping systems (i.e. row spacing, harvest timing, nitrogen balance) that produce grain for humans and forage for livestock.
• Design breeding strategies for improving the compatibility of perennial legumes, specifically alfalfa and kura clover, in intercrops with intermediate wheatgrass.
• Develop a long-term, collaborative domestication strategy to improve sainfoin seed yield and nutritional quality through a combination of breeding, agronomy, food science, and commercialization efforts.

Domestic

• North Carolina State University, Plants for Human Health Institute, Kannapolis, North Carolina
• Saint Louis University and Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri
• University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska
• University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
• University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota
• Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Global

• Makaneyyat Project, Ramallah, Palestine
• National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, LANGEBIO, Irapuato, Mexico

A Closer Look at Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a key player in producing chlorophyll, the pigment that absorbs sunlight for basic photosynthesis needs. Legumes continue to supply approximately 13% of the annual global agricultural nitrogen requirements, with synthetic inorganic nitrogen fertilizers fulfilling the vast majority of the remaining nitrogen requirements.

Legumes symbiosis with root-nodule bacteria (rhizobia) enables them to supply more than 100 Tg of biologically-available nitrogen to natural and agroecosystems each year through biological nitrogen fixation (BNF). This process, BNF, has been called the most fundamental biological process on earth aside from photosynthesis because nitrogen is the critical limiting element for plant growth. Availability of sufficient nitrogen to crop plants is essential for producing high-quality, protein rich, plant-based foods, and the entire nutritional nitrogen requirement for humans is obtained directly or indirectly from plants. Increasing the use of legumes for BNF supports the idea of ecological intensification by using ecological processes rather than external inputs for crop production.