LEGENDARY: knowledge creation and increasing acreage of legumes in diversified cropping systems by quantification of their ecosystem services

Horizon Europe Project (2024-2028)
Promotors: Prof. Steven Maenhout, Prof. em. Geert Haesaert, Prof. dr. ir. Steven Sleutel

Researchers: Greet Verlinden, Kevin Dewitte, Sofie Landschoot, Els Heyrman

The European agricultural sector currently faces a substantial challenge: the need to increase productivity, while simultaneously reducing the associated environmental impacts. Despite the well-documented benefits of integrating legumes into cropping systems – such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions and increased biodiversity – the growing area of legumes in Europe remains limited. The main objective of LEGENDARY is to dismantle the barriers hindering a stable, large-scale transition toward legume-based European cropping systems. Therefore, LEGENDARY aims to develop tools and methods that go considerably beyond the state-of-the-art to quantify the ecosystem services of legumes across diverse agro-climatic zones. To realize this ambition, the activities fill existing knowledge gaps and focus on 1) data collection in field experiments and on-farm trials in different agroclimatic zones, 2) innovative sensing tools in combination with statistical and machine learning methods to quantify the ecosystem services provided by legumes, and 3) development of interpretable indicators by quantifying ecosystem services in known units (kg, EUR, CO2 equivalents), to support farmers and advisers in managing farmland. By including all types of ecosystem services delivered by legumes – provisioning (e.g. nitrogen fixation), regulating (e.g. carbon sequestration) and cultural (e.g. aesthetics value) – a user-friendly application will be developed, to assist farmers in the choice of legume species and cropping systems suitable for their farm.