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Beer is one of themost popular drinks globally and productionmethods clearly need to becomemore sustainable. The brewing of legume grains could contribute to improved sustainability through encouraging the diversification of cropped systems and by providing more nutritious local co-products as animal feed. The aim of this studywas to assess the potential environmental effect of partially substituting malted barley with grain legumes as an option to mitigate the environmental impact of beer. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed to compare a novel Scottish beer produced with malted barley and UK-grown faba beans with a traditional malted barley beer. Weconsidered beer production as part of amulti-functional beer and animal feed value chain, where coproducts are used as a high-protein UK-grown animal feed. The environmental performances of the different beers were highly dependent on the system boundaries adopted. The simple attributional LCA indicated that a barley-bean beer could offer environmental savingswhen alcohol yields are optimised, with environmental burdens that were significantly smaller than those of the barley beer across 6 categories. When boundarieswere expanded to include both feed substitution and agricultural rotations, the barley-bean beer with current alcohol yields outperformed the barley beer across 8 impact categories, with a 15 %-17 % smaller climate change burden, mainly due to higher feed substitution achieved froma larger volumeof brewing co-productswith higher protein concentrations. Therefore, brewers should consider the use of legumes in their brewing recipes to lower their environmental footprint, increasing the availability of more nutritious beer co-products as a local source of animal feed, and diversifying cropping systems while adding novelty to their product range. Different boundaries settings and scenarios should be assessed in a beer LCA, and entire cropping rotations should be integrated to capture a more accurate picture of the agricultural stage.(c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Increasingly, consumers are paying attention to healthier food diets, “healthy” food attributes (such as “freshness”, “naturalness” and “nutritional value”), and the overall sustainability of production and processing methods. Other significant trends include a growing demand for regional and locally produced/supplied and less processed food. To meet these demands, food production and processing need to evolve to preserve the raw material and natural food properties while ensuring such sustenance is healthy, tasty, and sustainable. In parallel, it is necessary to understand the influence of consumers’ practices in maintaining the beneficial food attributes from purchasing to consumption. The whole supply chain must be resilient, fair, diverse, transparent, and economically balanced to make different food systems sustainable. This chapter focuses on the role of dynamic value chains using biodiverse, underutilised crops to improve food system resilience and deliver foods with good nutritional and health properties while ensuring low environmental impacts, and resilient ecosystem functions.

The food- and feed-value systems in the European Union are not protein self-sufficient. Despite the potential of legume-supported production systems to reduce the externalities caused by current cultivation practices (excessive use of N fertilizer) and improve the sustainability of the arable cropping systems and the quality of human diets, sufficient production of high-protein legume grains in Europe has not been achieved due to multiple barriers. Identifying the barriers to the production and consumption of legumes is the first step in realizing new pathways towards more sustainable food systems of which legumes are integral part. In this study, we engage stakeholders and decision-makers in a structured communication process, the Delphi method, to identify policy interventions leveraging barriers that hinder the production and consumption of legumes in the EU. This study is one of a kind and uses a systematic method to reach a common understanding of the policy incoherencies across sectors. Through this method we identify policy interventions that may promote the production of legumes and the creation of legume-based products in the EU. Policies that encourage reduced use of inorganic N fertilizer represent an important step toward a shift in the increased cultivation of legumes. Relatedly, investment in R&amp, D, extension services, and knowledge transfer is necessary to support a smooth transition from the heavy use of synthetic N fertilizer in conventional agriculture. These policy interventions are discussed within current EU and national plant-protein strategies.

The common bean (Phaseolous vulgarisL.) is a grain legume functionally characterized by its capacity for symbiotic of biological nitrogen fixation. As such, it does not demand the application of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer and can offer environmental benefits as part of holistic cropping systems. While common bean commodities are highly nutritious, commercial cultivation of this crop is declining in already-industrialized countries. However, recent interest of consumers towards diets that benefit environmental and personal health has rekindled commercial interest in legumes, including the common bean. The aim of this protocol is to identify agronomic practices that are capable of increasing the yield and quality of the common bean for use as food. To address this research question, published literature will be screened for inclusion on the basis of defined eligibility criteria to ensure data sources are selected in an objective and consistent manner. Consistency checks will be carried out for the title, abstract and full texts of the literature collated. The output is expected to be a summary of the knowledge available to maximize the productivity and quality of the common bean as food. This anticipated synthesis will be of utility for a wide range of value-chain stakeholders from farmers and consumers, to research scientists and policy makers.

Increasing the diversity of crop systems could enhance and stabilise crop yields while increasing sustainability. We report preliminary findings from two trials at the James Hutton Institute, UK, aiming to optimise the performance of spring cereal-legume species mixtures or ‘plant teams’. Commercial cereal and legume cultivars were tested for their performance in plant teams (compared to monocultures) under conventional and reduced input management. Wheat-faba bean plant teams were grown for silage and barley-pea plant teams were grown for grain. Over-yielding of species mixtures was detected in both trials. The best performing wheat-faba bean combinations contained the wheat variety Tybalt, while those based on the pea varieties Ingrid and Daytona combined with barley cultivars RGT Planet or KWS Sassy performed best in barley-pea plant teams. Preliminary analysis of plant traits is used to identify the mechanisms promoting productivity in these plant teams. These results were reported at the 'Advances in Legume Science and Practice' conference of the Association of Applied Biologists in Glasgow (2018).