Legumes stand a great chance at mitigating climate change by reducing fossil fuel use or by providing feedstock for the emerging biobased economies where fossil sources of energy and industrial raw materials are replaced in part by sustainable and renewable biomass resources (Jensen et al., 2012).
The use of nitrogen (N) fertilizer from legumes is another approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the use and production of chemical N fertilizer that is very energy-intensive and leads to emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil energy consumption and from nitrous oxide generation. Creating an energy-efficient organic fertilizer using nitrogen from natural N2 fixation is beneficial for the environment and decreases greenhouse gas emissions. The N fertilizer from legumes can be used on non-legume cash crops (Stinner, 2015).
Source: Mothapo and Dr. Grossman
The IPCC Report on ‘Climate Change and Land/ 2019’ highlighted that including plant-based food items as part of the ‘low greenhouse gas emission diet’ stands a good chance of mitigating the impacts of climate change while addressing the need for healthy and nutritious food for a rapidly growing population (IPCC, 2019).
References
Jensen, E.S., Peoples, M.B., Boddey, R.M., Gresshoff, P.M., Hauggaard-Nielsen, H., JR Alves, B. and Morrison, M.J., 2012. Legumes for mitigation of climate change and the provision of feedstock for biofuels and biorefineries. A review. Agronomy for sustainable development, 32(2), pp.329-364. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13593-011-0056-7.pdf
Legumes are versatile crops with lots of uses from a source of food to providing income, being animal feed and some legume varieties are used as medicine and fuel (Muoni et al., 2019, Akpalu et al., 2013).
Legumes have a good chance to enhance food and nutrition security in SSA because they are related to the local community’s culture and food consumption patterns. Legumes are nutritious and are able to adapt to rough climatic conditions and poor marginal soils (Abberton et al., 2022).
Legumes available and cultivated in SSA include African yam bean, bambara groundnut, cowpea, groundnuts, soybean, chickpea, pigeon pea (Stanton et al., 1966). African yam bean and bambara are part of the unpopular indigenous under-utilized orphan legumes including Kersting’s groundnut, Lima bean, and Jack bean (Popoola et al., 2022).
Source: CGIAR
The inclusion of legumes in a diet could offer a lifelong solution to SSA malnutrition, hunger, and protein deficiencies because legumes are nutrient-dense, and provide great quality protein & micronutrients (Popoola et al., 2022).
Besides nutritional benefits, legumes also have environmental benefits such as enhancing soil moisture, and water effectiveness, covering the soil, reducing soil evaporation, fixing soil nitrogen, and controlling erosion and weed (Vidigal et al., 2019, Popoola et al., 2022)
Legume challenges include long cooking time, poor shelf-life, low yield, sensitivity to daylight, presence of potent anti-nutritional factors, these challenges have discouraged utilization and production because farmers are less interested in investing their time and energy in cultivating and producing legumes (Nnamani et al., 2017; Popoola et al., 2020, Popoola et al., 2022).
Other challenges include poor market price, poor demand, lack of buyers, lack of improved varieties, and inadequate capital that have hampered their production (Khan et al., 2021). To deal with these challenges and get benefits from legumes Popoola et al. (2022) suggest that there is a necessity for systematic cultivation, wide acceptance, increased utilization, strategic crop improvement and funding, and the creation of global and local market spaces to improve consumption across the SSA.
References
Abberton, M., Paliwal, R., Faloye, B., Marimagne, T., Moriam, A. & Oyatomi, O. A. 2022. Indigenous African Orphan Legumes: Potential for Food and Nutrition Security in sub-Saharan Africa. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 83.
Khan, M. M., Rafii, M. Y., Ramlee, I. S., Jusoh, M., and Al-Mamun, S. (2021c). Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea L. Verdc): A crop for the new millennium, its genetic diversity, and improvements to mitigate future food and nutritional challenges. Sustainability 15, 1–27. doi: 10.1038/ s41598-021-93867-5. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5530
Muoni, T., Barnes, A. P., Öborn, I., Watson, C. A., Bergkvist, G., Shiluli, M. & Duncan, A. J. 2019. Farmer perceptions of legumes and their functions in smallholder farming systems in east Africa. International journal of agricultural sustainability, 17, 205-218. https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/16614760/15075.pdf
Nnamani, C. V., Ajayi, S. A., Oselebe, H. O., Atkinson, C. J., Igboabuchi, A. N., and Ezigbo, E. C. (2017). Sphenostylis stenocarpa (ex. A. Rich.) harms., a fading genetic resource in a changing climate: prerequisite for conservation and sustainability. Plan. Theory 6:30. doi: 10.3390/plants6030030. https://europepmc.org/article/med/28704944
Popoola, J. O., Aworunse, O. S., Ajani, O. C., Ojuederie, O. B., Adewale, D. B., Oyatomi, O. A., Eruemulor, D. I., Adegboyega, T. T. & Obembe, O. O. 2022. The exploitation of orphan legumes for food, income, and nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa. Frontiers in Plant Science, 1454. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.782140/full
Popoola, J., Ojuederie, O., Omonhinmin, C., and Adegbite, A. (2020). “Neglected and underutilized legume crops: improvement and future prospects,” in Recent Advances in Grain Crops Research. eds. F. Shah, Z. Khan, A. Iqbal, M. Turan and M. Olgun (UK: IntechOpen), 123–144. doi: 10.5772/ intechopen.87069
Stanton, W. R., Doughty, J., Orraca-Tetteh, R. & Steele, W. 1966. Grain legumes in Africa. Grain legumes in Africa.
Vidigal, P., Romeiras, M. M., and Monteiro, F. (2019). “Crops diversification and the role of orphan legumes to improve the sub-Saharan Africa farming systems,” in Crop Production. (ed). M. Hasanuzzaman (UK: IntechOpen), 1–21. https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/68083
