Integrated approach for Legume promotion and sustAinable value chaiNs Development

LAND will be based in a multi-actor approach, to operate through a three-pronged strategy:
1) co-operative research approach to identify drivers and barriers to legumes adoption in wider scale at national farming systems;
2) selection of high-quality and adapted legume material through the nutritional and agronomic profiling of 250 common bean accessions from the Portuguese Bank of Plant Germplasm (BPGV-INIAV); and
3) quantification of the social-economic value of legumes inclusion in value chains through a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).

The main expected outputs of LAND will be: giving voice to farmers opinions in the identification of barriers for legumes cultivation; intraspecies variability characterization of the seed quality traits in bean germplasm collection; national on-farm legume conservation and knowledge hub; agronomic, socio-economic evaluation of the impact of legume inclusion at the farming level through LCA; knowledge transfer materials implemented via local field-days and workshops; a state of the art, open access legume cultivation and exploitation toolkit; shortened legume value chains and link farmers to incentives, including commercial and agro-industrial opportunities.