Lentil: a new crop in Finland

Early cultivars of lentil can help to increase the arable land dedicated to legumes in Finland, and provide a high-value protein crop. Lentil can help to diversify Finnish cropping systems and improve soil quality thanks to BNF. Locally grown lentil can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finnish grown lentil could be consumed locally and could also be exported

Fitting legumes into an established farming system

Legume crops are an important part of healthy crop rotations. They offer more than just the harvested part: residual N, healthy soil, broken cereal disease cycles, ecological services. In 10 years 10 % of the arable land of Europe could be under legumes to meet our needs for livestock feed. Increased production of legumes will: Provide local feed, reduce international nitrogen imports and other "feed miles". Contribute biologically fixed nitrogen to energy crops as well as mainstream crops. Increase yield and quality of following crops. Add diversity to farm income streams

Adaptation of boreal field crop production to climate change

Peer reviewe

Legumes in Cropping Systems

This book is a contribution to the debate and knowledge for the rebalancing of farming and food using legumes. The main aim is to help people who are involved in developing cropping systems: the decision makers of today and today's students who are the decision makers of tomorrow. It is aimed at all relevant decision makers: farmers, professionals who support innovation in farming, and the policy community in its widest sense. It contains 13 chapters describing various aspects of the use of legumes (including grain and feed legumes) in European cropping systems. Each chapter provides deep insight into the relevant literature to support understanding rather than a comprehensive academic review. The aim is to empower the reader with insights and understanding of the underlying processes that influence cropping system development

David Bond and Jean Picard : Two pivotal breeders of faba bean in the 20th century

David Bond and Jean Picard, two leaders of European legume breeding, died within a few months of each other. On the basis of their agronomic and genetic training, they both met the challenge of breeding faba bean, a protein-rich species that had received little attention from breeders before the 1950s (Picard, 1953; Bond 1957). Both made great strides at modernizing their chosen crop by developing and applying new ideas and techniques, as well as generating new methods and genetic materials.Peer reviewe

The FIGS (Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy) approach identifies traits related to drought adaptation in Vicia faba genetic resources : Drought Adaptation and Genetic Resources

Efficient methods to explore plant agro-biodiversity for climate change adaptive traits are urgently required. The focused identification of germplasm strategy (FIGS) is one such approach. FIGS works on the premise that germplasm is likely to reflect the selection pressures of the environment in which it developed. Environmental parameters describing plant germplasm collection sites are used as selection criteria to improve the probability of uncovering useful variation. This study was designed to test the effectiveness of FIGS to search a large faba bean (Vicia faba L.) collection for traits related to drought adaptation. Two sets of faba bean accessions were created, one from moisture-limited environments, and the other from wetter sites. The two sets were grown under well watered conditions and leaf morpho-physiological traits related to plant water use were measured. Machine-learning algorithms split the accessions into two groups based on the evaluation data and the groups created by this process were compared to the original climate-based FIGS sets. The sets defined by trait data were in almost perfect agreement to the FIGS sets, demonstrating that ecotypic differentiation driven by moisture availability has occurred within the faba bean genepool. Leaflet and canopy temperature as well as relative water content contributed more than other traits to the discrimination between sets, indicating that their utility as drought-tolerance selection criteria for faba bean germplasm. This study supports the assertion that FIGS could be an effective tool to enhance the discovery of new genes for abiotic stress adaptation.Peer reviewe

Ensiling as a method to preserve energy crops and to enhance the energy yields

Effects to ethanol: Storing with additives increased the yield of sugars in enzymatic hydrolysis. Water soluble sugars well preserved. Some cellulose hydrolysed during ensiling. Storing altered the structure of the substrate? Suffered from acid formation when no additives were supplied. Effects to methane: Storing with or without additives increased methane yield. Formed acids were utilized, as well as the preserved water soluble sugars. Prolonged storing seemed to decrease methane yields

Nutritive quality of Finnish grown grain legumes

Grain legumes have excellent nutritional quality that makes them a staple ingredient for feeding ruminants, pigs and poultry. Legumes are known for their high protein content, and although they are low in the sulphur-containing amino acids and tryptophan, they have a high content of lysine; thus they are an ideal supplement to cereal-based diets and food products (Duranti & Cius 1997). Legumes have many beneficial effects in human diet. There is potential and sufficient farmer interest to establish grain legume crops in the Nordic-Baltic region through screening imported germplasm for adaptation. There are many potential uses of legume seeds as functional ingredients, thus further research is needed to design legume-supplemented food products. In addition, it is very important to publicize their health benefits, to assure consumer acceptance

The role of legumes in bioenergy poduction

We are investigating the role of legumes as components of bioenergy production. Two separate experiments, one with annual species and other with perennials, were established at Viikki in 2007. Selected grasses, legumes (or nitrogen fertilizer) and additional species were sown singly or in blends of two or three species

Stable nitrogen-cycling capacity in relation to fertilization and intercropping in a sub-boreal grassland

Grasslands are important in sub-boreal climate agricultural systems and are managed with various combinations of N fertilization and plant species. Ammonia-oxidizing and denitrifying microorganisms are key players in determining the fate of nitrogen (N) and thereby also the yield in grassland systems and their impact on gaseous N losses and leaching. We established a three-year field study in southern Finland with fertilizer treatment as a main-plot factor, including organic and synthetic fertilizers and plant species and mixtures thereof as the sub-plot factor. We quantified six genes encoding key N-cycling enzymes by quantitative PCR to determine the abundance of the communities involved in N-transformation processes and also included previously published data on crop yield, soil properties and the overall bacterial community composition. With the exception of ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB), which were primarily affected by fertilization, the abundances of all other N-cycling communities changed over time with either an increase or decrease from summer to autumn. Differences in gene abundances between plant species treatments and in fertilizer by plant species interactions were detected mainly in the beginning of the cropping season during the first year. The nirS-type denitrifiers and nosZII nitrous oxide reducers responded more to changes in soil properties than their functional counterpart nirK and nosZI communities. Using structural equation modeling, we show that the overall microbial community composition and diversity played an important role in mediating the management effects on crop yield, genetic potential for N retention and N2O sink capacity. However, a trade-off between the genetic potential for N retention and N2O sink capacity was detected, indicating the challenges in managing grasslands in a sustainable way.Peer reviewe