Seed Production of Cool-Season Food Legumes

Abstract

Cool-season food legumes - faba bean, chickpeas, and lentils - have been grown in the dry areas of West Asia for millennia. Cultivation has now expanded as far north as western Canada and as far south as Australia, with dramatic increases in area and production. Despite the long history of cultivation, crop improvement research began only recently with the establishment of research centers such as ICARDA. Efforts are being made to increase production to meet increasing demand from national and international markets. Provision of high-quality seed of new crop varieties is one way of increasing production and productivity. To produce and disseminate high-quality seed to farmers, production and quality control officers must have adequate technical knowledge of legume seed industry processes, from variety development to marketing and quality assurance. While there is a wealth of literature on crop improvement and grain production, technical information on seed production of cool-season food legumes is either unavailable or scattered among various sources; hence, the a need for a manual that will provide consolidated information with adequate detail on legume seed technology. This manual provides such information for faba beans, chickpeas, and lentils. It provides background information on variety description for release of new varieties; variety maintenance, a major limitation to multiplication of improved varieties; and technical aspects of seed multiplication, cleaning, treatment, storage, and quality assurance, with special emphasis on mechanization problems and seed-borne diseases. The manual is not intended to replace internationally established methods and procedures, but simply to make available, conveniently in one place, information on how to produce high-quality legume seed in a developing-country context.