Can we identify agronomically useful and climate-smart characteristics for legumes by comparing grass pea with pea?
Grasspea (Lathyrussativus) is a hardy legume grown for food, feed and forage, often by poor farmers. It has some very useful climate-smart characteristics, being very tolerant to drought, flooding and saline soils, but it faces the constraints of low yield and containing a neurotoxin (knownasODAP) that can cause the disease, neurolathyrism, in poorly nourished people. By contrast, the closely related legume, pea (Pisumsativum), is a more widely grown cool season pulse crop with relatively high yield potential and it lacks major antinutrients. It is, however, susceptible to many stresses that hinder its wider adoption by farmers in developing countries.