PLANTBASED PROTEIN

The impact of climate change is becoming increasingly clear for every year. As a result, the demand for plant-based protein food is on the rise, not least domestically produced.

 

The Nordic countries have a long cultivation tradition of grain legumes such as fava beans and peas. Given the increased interest, the future of Nordic cultivation of grain legumes should be bright. An enlarged domestic production would also contribute in a positive direction when it comes to Nordic food security being a climate-smart alternative to imported soybeans. In addition, grain legumes such as peas have the capacity of nitrogen fixation in the fields, a property with many benefits.

 

NordGen's collection includes fava beans, common beans, lentils and more than 2.000 accessions of peas – an asset that can be of importance for the future Nordic plant breeding. Below you can read more about some of our work with grain legumes.

NordGen is a stakeholder in the international EU research project INCREASE. The project aims at improving the sustainable use of plant genetic resources by enhancing the status of the genetic resources of four important food legumes: chickpea, common bean, lentil, lupin. Within the framework of the project, NordGen's entire collection of beans (144 accessions) were cultivated in the greenhouse for characterization during 2023. In the project, the morphology of leaves, flowers, pods and seeds is studied as well as time for flowering and seed maturity, plant height and seed yield. Leaf samples were also collected for genotyping.

Another European project that NordGen is part of is called ExploDiv and is organized through The European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR). Institutions from twelve European countries are partners in the project which, among other things, aims to identify and secure genetic resources within grain legumes to sustain adaptive capacity for resilience to climate change. During 2023, 30 accessions from the Nordic bean collection were cultivated in NordGen's garden to gain more knowledge on morphological traits.

In a collaboration between NordGen, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Foss analytics, a significant part of the Nordic pea collection was analyzed in 2023 using NIR (Near infrared) technology. This effort leds to more information about the pea collection, not least when it comes to the seed samples content of fat, protein, water as well as standard color.

As mentioned in the previous chapter "Projects", a new project focusing on protein crops such as peas, beans, lentils and clover, was granted in 2023.