Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Tree Association (which no longer publishes), but it should be noted that there are some
mistakes in their publications concerning legumes that are assumed to fix nitrogen, but
do not. More recently CSIRO, Australia, published NFTNews on behalf of the Interna-
tional Union of Forest Research organisations (IUFRO), but the editor (A. Kalinganina)
is nowoperating fromMali. Copies are nowonly being produced electronically and can
be obtained (free of charge) from http://www.iufro.org/science/divisions/division-
2/20000/20800/20802/newsletters/. However, there is relatively little information in
any of these publications on selection for improved nitrogen fixation (Sprent, 2005).
For example,
Dalbergia sissoo
is widely grown in India and many publications on its
management have been published, but only recently is serious attention being given to
positive use of its nodulating ability (e.g. Devagiri et al., 2007). There is now an interest
in income-generating products from legume trees other than timber. An example is
the widely used food additive, gum Arabic, from
Acacia senegal
, for which there is an
active EU programme (http://inco-acaciagum.cirad.fr) to find improved germplasm
and growing conditions to achieve higher and more reliable production (D.W. Odee,
personal communication).
6.1 Human food
Developed countries tend to use only one part of a legume, usually the pod or seed
for food, and reject the rest. In the developing world almost the whole plant (leaves,
flowers, fruits, tubers) may be eaten by humans with anything remaining being fed to
animals or used as fuel.
6.1.1
Vigna
spp.
Vigna subterranea
, commonly known as bambara groundnut, is an African native, with
underground pods (Plate 6.1), very popular as a food source. However, until recently
it was being displaced by peanut/groundnut. In their excellent account of bambara
groundnut, Anon (2006) suggest two possible reasons for its neglect. The first is that
it may be regarded as a poor person's crop, but the second, more likely one is that
'it seems largely due to the lack of familiarity by those setting the research agenda -
especially outside Africa'. A cynic might also add that there are vested interests in
using peanuts. Bambara groundnut is more drought tolerant than peanut, and can
tolerate more infertile soils. Although having quite a lot less oil and a little less protein,
it is nutritionally very balanced and can form the sole source of food for humans. The
main problem is that current yields are low, because there has been very little effort to
improve them. Some attempt to redress this is being made under an EU INCO-DEV
programme 'BAMLINK', involving workers in both Africa and India. This research is
using both traditional and modern molecular methods (Basu et al., 2007a, b), and it
is suggested that eventually a fourfold increase in yield may be possible (S. Mayes,
personal communication).
One legume that was widely promoted about a decade ago was
Vigna unguiculata
ssp.
sesquipedalis
, the long or winged bean. Its advantages are that all parts are edible,
