PLANT-BASED 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 to 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, soybeans, 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.

As mentioned in the previous chapter "Projects", a comprehensive project focusing on NordGen’s entire collection of protein crops such as peas, beans, lentils and clover, will be active during 2024 to 2026. Below are examples of other collaborative projects that were active during 2024.

 

 

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 2024 the next step was to multiply 12 selected accessions which will be evaluated at different geographical sites in 2025.

 

 

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 Near infrared (NIR) 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. The cooperation continued in 2024 and today the entire pea collection has been analyzed.

 

NordGen is an active partner in the ECPGR project EVA legumes which began its operations in 2024. It is a European network activity focusing on evaluation of different grain legumes in diverse environments throughout Europe. The crops included beans, chickpea, fava bean, lentil, lupine, pea and orphan legumes. NordGen will be involved in field trials on lentil, lupine and beans taking place in 2025 and 2026.