Legumes in sustainable agriculture

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Agriculture faces unprecedented demands for food and feed production due to the increase in world population predicted for the next decades.The growing concerns on environmental and food security make necessary to face these demands with more sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural practices which constitute a high challenge for researchers and farmers all over the world.Under this pressing scenario, legume crops must play an important role due to their widely acknowledged beneficial roles.The nitrogen-fixing properties of legume crops have a positive impact on environment since they increase soil fertility and reduce the requirements of inorganic fertilizers.The utilization of legumes in crop rotations also allow for the mitigation of pest and diseases in subsequent crops, which help in reducing farmer costs and protecting the environment.Despite the advantages of legumes, their cultivation has not achieved the expectations and the cultivation area devoted to some legumes has declined worldwide in the last 50 years.This special issue was conceived as an opportunity to focus attention on the role of legumes as part of sustainable food production.The timing is important since 2016 was declared the International Year of the Pulses at the 68th United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/68/231).The term pulses is restricted to crops harvested solely for dry grain as noted in the UN resolution, including beans, chickpeas, peas and lentils but the importance of legumes in agriculture transcends the production of grains since they have an increasing role as forage or they can be used as green manure.This special issue covers significant topics including plant adaptation, agronomy, breeding, biotic & abiotic stresses and quality in both pulses and forage species.All these topics were addressed during the Second International Legume Society Conference, held in Troia, Portugal, in October 2016 and many of the articles published in this issue are related to results reported during this conference.The opening article of this issue highlights the importance of flowering time in plant adaptation (Catt and Paull 2017).These auhors explore the variation in flowering time in faba bean in order to breed new lines with higher yield and adapted to specific environments.After this, several articles report advances in agronomy and field testing which are important to demonstrate the beneficial properties of legumes in cropping systems and for the identification of cultivars with wide or specific adaptation to different growing conditions.