Читать книгу Dry Beans and Pulses Production, Processing, and Nutrition онлайн
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INTRODUCTION
Legumes (dry beans and other pulses) occupy an important place in human nutrition, especially among the low‐income groups of people in developing countries. Although terms legumes, pulses, and beans are used interchangeably, they have distinct meanings. For example, a legume refers to any plant from the Fabaceae family, including leaves, stems, and pods, while edible seeds from the legume plant are called pulses, which include beans, cowpeas, chickpeas, lentils, and peas, to name a few (HSPH 2020; Perera et al. 2020). Food legumes have significant importance in human diet and animal feed worldwide and occupy an important place in the global food supply chain besides promoting sustainable agricultural production systems (Pratap et al. 2021).
Legumes typically have pea‐blossom type flowers, herbaceous to woody stems, a generally well‐defined taproot, nitrogen‐assimilating bacteria within nodules associated with the fibrous root system, bivalved seeds in varying numbers borne in single‐celled pods that readily separate into halves at maturity, an annual lifecycle, and grow throughout the world from the tropics to high mountainous regions (Hardenburg 1927). Legume plants serve as hosts for nitrogen‐fixing bacteria (Rhizobium) through symbiotic colonization within nodules that develop among the plant root system. Thus, legume crops are soil nutrient enhancers that build soil nitrogen levels through suitable crop rotations of legumes with non‐nitrogen fixing cereal grains (Bliss 1993; Martinez‐Romero 2003).