Grain Legumes Strategies and Seed Roadmaps for Select Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Tropical Legumes II (TL-II) is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) sponsored project implemented by three International Agricultural Research Centers – ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA. TL-II aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the drought-prone areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia through improved productivity and production of six major grain legumes – chickpea, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, pigeonpea and soybean. The project activities are in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe in SSA and India and Bangladesh in South Asia. The project has formed a wide range of partnerships with the host national agricultural research systems, advanced research institutions, NGOs, and several other projects funded by the BMGF and other organizations to ensure the sustainability and scalability of the project outcomes. In the six years since inception in 2007/08, a total of 113 new legume varieties have been released in collaboration with NARS in the partner countries. The newly released groundnut, cowpea, common bean, chickpea, pigeonpea and soybean varieties are fast replacing old varieties in these areas of Africa and Asia resulting in significant increases in productivity and production at national level. Participatory variety selection trials have been expanded to new villages to up-scale dissemination of new varieties in all project countries. The project was able to undertake trials with more than 281,000 farmers directly during the past six years (2007/08–2012/13). Workable and efficient models for the production of different categories of seed have been identified. The seed production systems are country-specific. Women and women’s groups have been empowered to produce and market legume seed in many countries. A total of 222,531 tons of improved legume seed of all six crops have been produced and distributed since inception. The project strategy is to reach smallholder farmers with improved varieties through small seed packs (1, 2 and 5 kg) for wider technology dissemination. At the current smallholder land allocation to legumes of approximately 0.2 ha per household, the 5kg pack will guarantee farmers their seed legume requirement within one season. The seed so far produced is enough to serve 44.5 million smallholder farmers, providing the legume protein and nutrition requirement of 222.5 million individuals (5 persons per household). Cumulatively, as a result of improved seed availability and accessibility, farmers have adopted improved legume varieties in about 27% of the area under legumes in Mali, 38% in Niger, 57% in Malawi, 35% in Tanzania, 59% in selected districts of Uganda and 22% in Nigeria. The reduction in per unit cost of cultivation of improved varieties ranges from 21% in Malawi to 44% in Uganda, compared to local varieties.