Press and News Strengthening global research for a nutritious and secure food future

Because they are resilience powerhouses: delivering nutritious, culturally-rooted food and feed for humans and animals, improving soil health, boosting climate resilience, and expanding livelihood options. From beans and chickpeas to lentils, faba beans, grass pea, forage and others, legumes offer a practical and scalable pathway for improving nutrition through plant-based protein, addressing drought, heat and soil degradation, food insecurity, pest and disease pressure and resource scarcity.

At a time when climate stresses and food insecurity are rising around the world, this transformative collaboration represents a timely and strategic step to tackle these challenges and generate the funds required to do this at scale. Together, the two centres bring excellence in genetic diversity and discovery, and as the custodians of the world’s largest legume genebanks, are advancing breeding and genetics through to delivery, including in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Building on these strengths, and challenging business as usual models, we are laying the foundation for a global legume effort— a future-food-focused, impact-oriented platform to accelerate the development and adoption of climate-resilient, biodiversity-protective, nutrition-rich, and market-relevant legume innovations.