A decade of Tropical Legumes projects: Development and adoption of improved varieties, creation of market-demand to benefit smallholder farmers and empowerment of national programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Chris Ojiewo,Rajeev K. Varshney,Emmanuel Monyo

doi:10.1111/pbr.12744

Abstract

This article highlights 12 years (2007–2019) of research, achievements, lessons learned, challenges and gaps in discovery‐to‐delivery research in legumes emanating from three projects, collectively called Tropical Legumes (TL) with a total investment of about US$ 67 million funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These projects were implemented by three CGIAR centres (ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA) together with 15 national agricultural research system partners in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia. The TL projects together with some of their precursors and complementary projects from other agencies, facilitated the development of 266 improved legume varieties and the production of about 497,901 tons of certified seeds of the target legume crops in the focus countries. The certified seeds have been planted on about 5.0 million ha by more than 25 million smallholder farmers in the 15 countries and beyond, producing about 6.1 million tons of grain worth US$ 3.2 billion. Furthermore, the projects also trained 52 next generation scientists that included 10 women, by supporting 34 Masters degrees and 18 PhD degrees.

Highlights

The Tropical Legumes (TL) projects supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) were jointly implemented by three CGIAR Centres (ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA) together with 15 national agricultural research system (NARS) partners in select focus countries (Figure 1)
The projects aimed to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in drought‐prone areas of Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA) through improved productivity and production of six major grain legume crops – chickpea (Cicer arietinum), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan) and soybean (Glycine max)
While Phases I and II of the project focussed on research and development activities in six target legume crops, Senegal was the only country that was dropped in Phase II

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

The Tropical Legumes (TL) projects supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) were jointly implemented by three CGIAR Centres (ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA) together with 15 national agricultural research system (NARS) partners in select focus countries (Figure 1). During the three phases of the project, 28 chickpea varieties were developed and released and 259,552 tons of certified seeds of modern improved varieties were produced and planted on about 2.2 million ha (Table 1) Some of these achievements have been presented in detail by Gaur et al (2019) in this issue. The BMGF investment in TL II and TL III projects has supported the production of about 498,000 tons of certified seeds for the target legume crops over the past decade (2007–2017) in SSA and South Asia This certified seed has been planted on about 5.0 million ha by more than 25 million smallholder farmers in 15 countries and produced about 6.1 million tons of grain worth US$ 3.2 billion (Table 1). TL projects have trained 34 Masters degree and 18 PhD degree students including 10 females and 42 males (Table 2)

12 | SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK

Findings

CONFLICT OF INTEREST