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Our intention was to give a very rough draft of 1) our contemporary knowledge on various aspects of the hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet) biodiversity, 2) most important aspects of breeding this crop for forage, grain and biomass yield and ornamental purposes and 3) innovative approaches in its agronomy, such as intercropping with other legumes.

In most Western, Central and Southeastern European countries, it is cool season legumes, such as pea (Pisum sativum L.), faba bean (Vicia faba L.), chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), lupins (Lupinus spp.), grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.), vetches (Vicia spp.), lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) and clovers (Trifolium spp.) that are mostly grown. Two warm-season exceptions are common beans (Phaseolus spp.) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.), cultivated mostly in Southern and Southeastern Europe. During the last decade, a programme has been launched at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops and assisted from the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Novi Sad aimed at breeding and agronomy of the less-known warm season legume crops in this part of Europe, with a specific emphasis upon pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Huth), hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet), adzuki bean (Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H. Ohashi), black gram (Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper), mung bean (Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek) and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.). The first step was the establishment of a collection of each of these species, with characterising the most peculiar morphological and anatomical traits and evaluating the most important agronomic traits such as forage and grain yield, quality and stress response, as well as the photoperiodical reaction. Some of pigeon pea accessions were able to produce forage yield of more than 100 t ha-1 of fresh forage, but remained in full flowering until very late autumn and were barely able to bring forth seeds.

We established four main principles for mutual intercropping annual legumes: same time of sowing; similar growing habit; similar cutting time; and one component has good standing ability (supporting crop) and another one poor (supported crop). There are three main intercropping groups: (1) ‘tall’ cool season legumes; (2) ‘short’ cool season legumes; (3) warm-season annual forage legumes. In the ‘tall’ cool season group, faba bean and white lupin are supporting crop, while the supported crops are normal-leafed pea common vetch, Hungarian vetch, hairy vetch and grass pea. This may be beneficial for both by weed reduction and preservation of photosynthetically active leaves. The ‘short’ cool season group comprises semi-leafless pea as supporting crop and normal-leafed, bitter vetch and lentil as supported crops. If intercropped, semi-leafless pea provides improved standing ability of the whole intercrop, while normal-leafed pea, bitter vetch or lentil fill the available space within the stand and contribute to better utilisation of sunlight, at the same time reducing weeds. In the warm-season group, soybean and pigeon pea are supporting crops, while mung bean, adzuki bean, black gram, cowpea and hyacinth bean are supported crops. Soybean may bear cowpea or hyacinth bean stems and thus assist in preserving their leaves and profit from significantly decreased weed infestation.