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

撒哈拉以南非洲(SSA)农业生产率的增长落后于人口增长，使该区域的粮食和营养日益缺乏保障。豆类具有巨大的潜力来解决改善小农生计和自然资源状况的许多制约因素，无论是以家庭消费或出售的谷物、牲畜饲料、健康和营养蛋白质、可获得的土壤养分或薪材的形式。为多种用途的豆类寻找合适的生境可以帮助减轻贫困、提高粮食安全、改善营养和提高自然资源地位。然而，尽管几十年的农业研究促进发展，到目前为止，最贫穷的农户对豆类的吸收有限。我们将通过制定一个现有的决策框架(LegumeCHOICE)来帮助解决这个问题，该框架旨在增加这些系统中豆类的采用。我们将把现有的数据与我们将在这里生成的关于豆类表现(产量、固氮能力、养分和水分的有效利用)之间的关系以及在不同条件和管理下与环境的相互作用(如影响土壤碳和氮储量)之间的关系合并到一个可访问的数据库中。这将形成一个强大的LegumeCHOICE工具，我们将针对一系列特定的环境进行测试，并将嵌入正在进行的开发倡议中。它将帮助小农根据预期的目的、预期的农场环境、管理和经济状况选择哪些豆类。这是朝着改善粮食和营养安全、减少贫困和改善南沙地区小农和农村人口，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.