Food legumes are important constituents of human and animal nutrition, supplying high quality proteins crucial for a balanced diet. These crops also play an important role in low-input agricultural production systems by fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Despite systematic and continuous breeding efforts by legume researchers all over the world, substantial genetic gains have not been achieved. These issues require immediate attention, and overall, a paradigm shift is needed in breeding strategies to strengthen our traditional crop improvement programs. To this end, Biology and Breeding of Food Legumes provides extensive information on their history, origin, evolution and botany, as well as breeding objectives and procedures, nutritional improvement, industrial uses, post-harvest technology and recent developments made through biotechnological intervention.

Contributions by: Geert Angenon, Ashwani Basandrai, Judith Burstin, Steven Cannon, S Chaturvedi, H Chaudhary, Percy Chimwamurombe, Nazmul Haq, Manabu Ishitani, Shiv Kumar, Monika Lulsdorf, Michael Materne, Nobuko Ohmido, Klaus Oldach, Reid Palmer, Marta Santalla, Jessica Schlueter, B Singh, Mohar Singh, Carlos Spehar, Brijesh Tiwari, Cenzig Toker, Rajeev Varshney, Maria Wedzony, Asibuo Yaw