Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Long-term Europe-Africa Research and Innovation Partnership for Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture

Titre : BENEFIT-Med : Boosting technologies of orphan legumes towards resilient farming systems in the Greater Mediterranean Region : from bench to open field

Pays/Région : Morocco ; Algeria ; Tunisia

Date : Start date 2022-05-01 // End date 2025-01-01

Identifiant : 498-BENEFIT-MED
Type de projet : Applied research project

Contexte
The current Climate Change scenario predicts that global warming will dramatically impact the Mediterranean Basin, posing added threats to the sustainability of current farming systems. Pulses provide balanced nutrition combined with high resilience to drought, soil acidity and salinity, and heat, adding value to rotation systems and intercropping and supporting sustainable agricultural practices. In this Context, orphan legumes are a biodiversity niche adapted to extreme soil and climate conditions, tailored to face changing environments. There is limited information about orphan legumes’ characteristics, use, integration into farming systems, and sustainable treatments to enhance their climate resilience and productivity further. The value of orphan legumes as climate-ready crops could be significantly enhanced by improving seed quality through dedicated priming techniques. Based on these premises, the BENEFIT-Med project focused on improved seed germination as a starting point to valorise orphan legumes and promote local socio-economic development in North Africa and the Mediterranean area. Enhanced germination capacity defines high-quality seeds as a proxy of successful crop yields, and a well-structured seed system is required to boost the production and use of orphan crops.

Présentation
BENEFIT-Med aims to develop innovative technology for sustainable crop production, relying on highly resilient legume accessions and ‘on-farm’ seed biopriming with bacteria inoculants to enhance seed vigour and seedling performance under pressure adverse climatic conditions. The availability of primed seeds of Mediterranean orphan legumes will improve food production at the local level and buffer economic/social/ environmental shocks, supplying higher incomes to smallholder farmers, particularly women. In this Context, open-field trials will be set up to assess the impact of priming on agronomic performance and yield stability of the target accessions while climate change and variability on existing and new farming systems will be quantified. Local legumes will also be valorised as components of a resilient and sustainable food system whose relevance has been dramatically shown by the COVID-19 pandemic. A database will be set up to integrate the available data on orphan legumes with knowledge gathered by BENEFIT-Med. A multi-stakeholder platform will be set up to promote the new farming system at multiple levels (participatory model), focusing on specific training/ability building activities. The farmers’ socio-economic benefits from the BENEFIT-Med model implementation will be shown through LCA/LCC analyses, highlighting profitability, resilience, and environmental sustainability.

Coordinateur : University of Pavia
Partenaires : Ferhat Abbas Sétif University 1 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) Agricultural University of Athens Benaki Phytopathological Institute (BPI) Agroland SA Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Sciences (IAV) Université Hassan II de Casablanca BLC3 Campus de Tecnologia e Inovação University of Sfax

Financement principal : Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) (H202
Budget : 833 736 EUR

FNSSA project database