This report sets out the progress that the Legume Generation Clover Innovation Community made up until August 2025 in boosting the breeding of clovers (Trifolium repens) and red clover (Trifolium pratense). These are two key forage legumes in agricultural systems.
This report presents a practical European roadmap to strengthen and scale protein crops, using fava beans as a concrete lens to show what is possible across both food and feed. Co-created with farmers (conventional, organic, regenerative), input providers, processors, retailers, food service, researchers and civil society, it maps today’s barriers and sets out coordinated policy and market solutions that work across farming systems. It translates these insights into concrete recommendations for key EU and national policy frameworks, including the CAP, CMO, NRP, ECF, and the Public Procurement Directive. By focusing in depth on fava beans while keeping recommendations transferable to other legumes, the roadmap shows how protein crops can reduce dependence on imported feed and fertilisers, improve soil health and biodiversity, and boost farm profitability and resilience. It quantifies the impact of these measures on farmer incomes, production volumes and strategic autonomy, and illustrates what a “Legume Renaissance” could deliver for European agriculture and diets by 2040.
This report documents the progress that has been made up until August 2024 by Legume Generation to boost the breeding of phaseolus beans.
Our activities are guided by the expectations of the breeders of our innovation community. Our innovation community consists of 20 partners with currently 11 breeding and 13 pre-breeding programmes. By addressing their demands, we will gain improved phaseolus crops that compete better with other crops on farms. Phaseolus bean encompasses several crops which we consider in our work: Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) as snap (vegetable or French bean) and dry bean. There are two growing forms for each: bush and pole bean each. Common bean is also cultivated in intercropping for feed. The scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.) is a pole bean grown for both snap and dry beans.
Soybean is the key legume crop in European agriculture for food and feed protein production. In the Legume Generation project (Horizon Europe), the European Soybean Innovation Community with its major breeding programmes have joined forces to boost soybean breeding. As there is a growing need for improved varieties, the project supports the innovation community in its breeding and innovation efforts for better adaptation to European growing conditions, competitive yield performance, and improved end-use quality for food production.
Chickpea, a high-quality protein source, is still rarely cultivated in Austrian agriculture, although its high drought tolerance would make it a suitable alternative crop in the eastern arid growing regions, where climate change increasingly causes drought stress. Most European countries, including Austria, are still heavily dependent on imports, with access to chickpea varieties that are adapted to local environmental conditions being limited. In this study, 24 different foreign chickpea varieties of both the Kabuli and the Desi types were grown and assessed in a field trial in the arid Austrian growing region Marchfeld in 2023. The varieties differed in phenotypical appearance, plant development, yield, yield components, and chemical composition of the harvested material. Measured yield at normalized 86% dry matter content ranged between 16 and 24 dt/ha, with the three highest yielding varieties being of the Kabuli type. Protein content ranged from 19.2% to 23.0%. Seeds from varieties of the Kabuli type displayed a higher total saccharide content, whereas those of the Desi type exhibited a higher polyphenol content. The findings from our field trial suggest that chickpea holds promise as a viable alternative crop for dry regions in Eastern Austria.
Keywords: chickpea, drought tolerance, climate change adaptation, plant-based protein, variety characteristics
The purpose of this paper is to characterise protein crops and to discuss the challenges and opportunities for the genetic improvement of legumes in a changing environment. It relates to the pre-farm gate part of protein crop value chains. We hope to address in particular further public (such as the European Union) and private investors (breeders) and breeders in crop genetic improvement.
