Contributions

Cereal-legume synergies

Against the background of current and projected challenges, GLDC will contribute to transforming agri-food systems in target agroecologies and, in doing so, will significantly contribute to meeting the SRF objectives of reduced poverty and improved food security, nutritional security for health and improved natural resource systems and ecosystems services. The CRP’s value proposition is based on a rationale of logical synergies between sorghum, millets and the grain legumes grown in common agroecologies²⁴. These cereal and legume crops share multiple values in agri-food systems as resilient crops that provide nutritious food for local consumption and as traded commodities²⁵, or as feed and fodder for livestock²⁶ and in their particular importance for women farmers and end-consumers²⁷. In contrast to the major cereal commodities, these crops suffer the constraints of underdeveloped agri-food systems due to inadequate support and investment by the public and private sectors²⁸. Yet they are of critical importance for transforming smallholder farming to become more resilient, productive and sustainable.

In the mixed and agro-pastoral dryland agroecologies of SSA and SA, sorghum, millets and grain legumes are grown in mixed crop-livestock farming systems, in rotation or as intercrops²⁹. These systems offer multiple cereal-legume synergies for research intervention, such as improved on-farm sequencing of rotations and intercrops³⁰; better management³¹ of soil, water, fertility, diseases, pests and weeds; integrating crops with livestock³²; risk-mitigation through enterprise diversification³³; and household management of labor, diet and income³⁴. Achieving these synergies will require agronomic and farming system research and closely coordinated efforts in breeding with traits that offer complementarity in season length, plant nutrient composition, growth habit and carry-over attributes³⁵. GLDC also purports real synergies in post-farm gate research to find and develop the priorities, opportunities and niches for these cereal and legume crops in emergent agricultural value chains.

The place-based farming, household and market synergies of sorghum, millets and grain legumes are one argument for a coordinated R4D program. As importantly, the research facilities that support these crops within the CGIAR and National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) partners are also place-based, located throughout the semi-arid and sub-humid drylands. Given the relatively small research infrastructure investment for GLDC crops, shared facilities must offer efficiencies in use and inspiration^B.