Legume-based agroecosystem for sustainable intensification: An overview

Increasing demand for nutritious, safe, healthy food, and energy demands for escalating population, and the commitment to protect biodiversity and other natural resources, represent a tremendous challenge to agriculture under the worsening situation of climate change. Thus, food and nutritional demands must be met while protecting the environment, especially in the developing courtiers where soil health must be restored, ecosystem services enhanced, and food and nutritional security advanced. Soil sustainability implies the maintenance of the desired ecological balance, enhancement and preservation of soil functions, and protection of above and below-ground biodiversity. Beginning with foundational insights into the importance of legumes in health and wealth establishment, this book includes the role of legumes in addressing issues and management for long-term sustainability in diversified cropping systems. Legumes play an important role in the intensive cropping systems to reduce the nitrogen input and enhance the soil fertility for sustainable crop production through resources intensification in agriculture. In the second section, the book addresses concerns to food, nutritional and environmental security, improving protein in the human diet, and their importance to human and animal health. The third and fourth sections are focused on the role of legumes in soil health and agroecosystem by addressing the questions, and management for eco-friendly approaches to soil and agroecosystem sustainability. The fifth section focused on the scope of legumes improvement by addressing legume biology, breeding improvement, and current trends and tools for genetic enhancement in the genomics era for a sustainable future. The final section focused on the role of legumes nitrogen budgeting, trade, challenges, and policy perspectives toward the social and economic sustain on the basis of quantitative needs.