UniLaSalle presented its legume projects at the XVIIth Congress of the European Society of Agronomy, which was held in Potsdam, Germany.
The XVIIth Congress of the European Society of Agronomy took place in Potsdam (Germany) from August 29 to September 2. The main theme of the congress was legumes with a session dedicated to this subject "Trade-offs of producing protein from crops and livestock".
In this context, UniLaSalle presented two projects, in the form of an oral presentation and a poster: the "Soja Made in Normandy" project, where the work presented concerned an evaluation of the potential for inserting soya into Normandy rotations (AGHYLE Rouen & Beauvais Research Unit), and "Calège", where the potential for production of tropical legumes in the North of France was evaluated (AGHYLE Beauvais Research Unit).
In the dedicated session, a number of presentations focused on the need to increment plant protein production in Europe and how to succeed on a continental-national scale. Others focused on improving technical itineraries of already grown legumes to increase production potential, and a third group of presentations focused on diversifying cropping systems to increase resilience and sustainability by including legumes.
In conclusion, everyone agreed that not enough legumes are produced in Europe and that more needs to be done to cover our needs in plant proteins.
Solutions in sight
The avenues of improvement covered both the improvement of species, the increase in the number of species cultivated and the understanding of the yield gaps incurred by legumes.
In addition, the different scales at which potential exists to successfully increase plant protein production were discussed. However, it was detected that there is a big gap and lack of coordination between the policies to introduce legumes, the creation of value chains and the willingness, ease and economic interest that farmers would have to grow these protein crops for profit.
