Special Issue: IBERIAN CONGRESS ON LEGUMES. AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD SUSTAINABILITY

2024-11-08

Submission deadline

June 30th, 2025

Only papers presented at the Congreso Ibérico de Leguminosas 2024 are eligible for this Special Issue. The congress will take place in León, Spain, from November 13th to 15th. For more information, please visit the meeting webpage: https://fgulem.unileon.es/conlegleon/

Submissions will be accepted from November 15th, 2024 to Jun 30th, 2025.

Topic editors

  • Lucia de la Rosa Fernández (Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA-CSIC), Spain).
  • Daniel Plaza Bonilla (Universidad de Lleida-AGROTECNIO, Spain).
  • José C. Jiménez López (Estación Experimental del Zaidín (EEZ-CSIC), Spain).

Note

If you would like to contribute to this Special Issue, please select the section " Special Issue: Iberian Congress on Legumes. Agricultural and Food Sustainability" on the SJAR platform and indicate this section in your cover letter when making your submission.

Scope

Legume plants have remarkable features that can be harnessed to improve food security and alleviate nutritional shortage. They decrease our dependence on fertilizers; mitigating environment harm by reducing the production and release of greenhouse gases, thus mitigate the progression of climate change and also improve soil health. Legume crops are grown around the world, providing a diverse range of food crops that are significant sources of plant-based proteins for humans, and empower local communities.

Legumes also provide essential services to agriculture through their capability to fix atmospheric nitrogen by rhizobial symbiosis, supplying accessible nitrogen to agro-ecosystems, while increasing soil carbon content, stimulating the productivity of subsequent crops. Legumes also promote suitable use and recycling of water and nutrients, helping to control weeds, and acting as biocontrol agents to fight pests and diseases that cause significant agro-industrial production losses.

Interestingly, plant diversity provides a natural resilience to new agricultural challengers, including new strains of diseases and climate conditions. Legume collections play a crucial role in integrating these crops on a large scale within our agricultural systems. Studies on the diversity of this germplasm, bolstered by new genomic tools, are essential for incorporating these resources into breeding programs aimed at expanding the variety options available to farmers. This includes developing materials with enhanced resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses.

Legumes are a pillar for agricultural sustainability. Their introduction in cropping systems through various agronomic strategies both in time (e.g. crop rotations, multi-service cover crops) and in space (intercropping) has direct impacts on resources use efficiency. When best management practices are used, cropping systems with legumes can led to the reduction of reactive N, losses such as soil nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere and nitrate leaching to groundwater.

Legumes play a major role in crop rotations, commonly based on cereals, contributing to their diversity and positively impacting the following crops through a range of mechanisms encompassing improvements in pest control, soil structure, easing the release of plant nutrient such as P, besides their known effect on N credit.

Grain legumes also present outstanding nutritional and nutraceutical properties. They are well-recognized as sources of many nutritional compounds such as starch, fibre, vitamins, and minerals, but particularly for their high protein content for the human diet, and being an essential food crop for people in developing countries. In this context, they are an affordable food that contributes for achieving future food and feed security in the context of an increasing world population. Legumes have also been actively promoted as a sustainable plant-based protein source, playing a pivotal role in global health and food security as they require significantly less water and fertilizer input and produce less greenhouse gases than animal protein sources.

Recent advances have been made in uncovering the beneficial effects of legumes beyond meeting basic nutrient requirements. Thus, there is a growing body of scientific evidences regarding the health benefits of some of their bioactive components in inflammatory-related diseases, cardiovascular diseases, obesity and weight management, type-2 diabetes, and cancer among others. However, much work is remaining to be done for fully clarification and understanding of the underlying mechanisms promoting their human health properties.

Research topics

This Research Topic aims to gather a collection of up-to-date and innovative studies for a better understanding on the current improvements in legumes for agricultural and food sustainability from biodiversity, environmental and food security viewpoints. These studies include but are not limited to:

  • Broad-based characterization and evaluation of legume collections, including classical, high-throughput, genetic and genomic methodologies.
  • Gene identification linked with morphological structures, molecular pathways, diseases behavior.
  • Development of genetic maps and pangenomes.
  • Morpho-physiological features of legumes under stress condition.
  • Adaptation mechanisms to abiotic and abiotic stresses.
  • Resistance gene discovery and breeding utilization.
  • New breeding techniques for legume.
  • Performance of cropping systems diversified with legumes from an agronomic or socioeconomic point of view.
  • Environmental impact of legumes introduction in crop rotations on natural resources: soil, air, water, etc.
  • Modelling of legumes at the crop, pre-crop and cropping system scale.
  • Climate change mitigation and adaptation through legumes.
  • Legume inoculants.
  • Improvements in weed, pest and disease control in legumes.
  • The nutritional quality and functional properties of legumes compounds.
  • Legume seed nutraceuticals properties and their molecular mechanisms for human health improvement.
  • Role of new bioactive components as functional foods.
  • Legumes anti-nutritional factors and their influence in human health. Allergies and Intolerances to Legumes.
  • Technological developments for novel legume-derived products adapted to consumer preference and health threats.
  • Global food security.