LegumeSELECT: Science-driven Evaluation of LEgume Choice for Transformed livelihoods

撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）的农业生产率增长落后于人口增长，使该地区的粮食和营养日益不安全。豆类具有巨大的潜力，可以解决许多制约小农生计和改善自然资源状况的因素，其形式可以是供家庭消费或销售的谷物、牲畜饲料的饲料、保健和营养的蛋白质、可用的土壤养分或木材燃料。寻找多用途豆科作物的生态位有助于减轻贫困、增加粮食安全、改善营养和改善自然资源状况。然而，尽管进行了几十年的农业发展研究，但迄今为止，最贫穷的农户对豆类的吸收有限。我们将通过开发一个现有的决策框架（legumchoice）来帮助解决这一问题，该框架旨在增加这些系统中豆类的采用。我们将把现有数据与我们将在这里生成的关于不同条件和管理下豆科植物性能（产量、固氮能力、养分和水的有效利用）及其与环境的相互作用（如影响土壤碳和氮储量）之间关系的数据结合起来，形成一个可访问的数据库。这将形成一个强大的legumchoice工具，我们将针对一系列特定环境进行测试，并将嵌入到正在进行的开发计划中。它将帮助小农户根据期望的目的、对自身农场环境的预期性能、管理和经济情况选择哪些豆类。这是朝着改善粮食和营养安全、减少贫困、改善小农和农村人口（特别是妇女）的生产环境迈出的重要一步。

Growth in agricultural productivity lags behind population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) making the region increasingly food and nutrition insecure. Legumes have great potential to deal with many of the constraints to improve smallholder livelihoods and natural resource status, either in the form of grains for home consumption or sale, fodder for livestock feed, protein for health and nutrition, available soil nutrients, or fuel wood. Finding niches for multi-purpose legumes could help alleviate poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and enhance natural resource status. However, despite several decades of agricultural research for development, so far there has been only limited uptake of legumes by poorest farming households. We will help redress this by developing an existing decision framework (LegumeCHOICE) aimed at increasing adoption of legumes in these systems. We will combine existing data with data we will generate here on relationships between legume performance (yield, ability to fix nitrogen, efficient use of nutrients and water) and interactions with their environment (such as influencing soil carbon and nitrogen stocks) under different conditions and managements, into an accessible database. This will form a robust LegumeCHOICE tool, that we will test for a range of specific contexts and will embed with ongoing development initiatives. It will help inform smallholder farmers as to which legumes to select based on desired purpose, anticipated performance for their own farm contexts, management and economics. This is an important step towards improving food and nutritional security, reducing poverty, and enhancing the production environment of smallholder farmers and rural populations, in particular women, in SSA.