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The Turkish Minister of Food, Agriculture and Livestock Mehdi Eker attended the first IYOP Event to be hosted by the Turkish Ministry on January 30th. The minister highlighted the importance of pulses, and announced the preparation of an action plan for IYOP 2016. Hakan Bahceci was among the speakers at this event, who spoke to the importance of this opportunity to the sector and increased support for farmers to produce pulses.
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Meat free week was an initiative launched in Australia, which was also picked up by the US and the UK. The reasons behind this proposal are many, and include the high amount of water and grain needed to breed cattle in comparison to that needed to grow vegetables and vegetable sources of protein. Read more about pulses and sustainability.
Many organizations and celebrities encouraged people to not eat meat, including fish and sea food, for the last week of March. Initially Sir Paul McCartney boosted the Meat Free Monday campaign and now there are plenty of celebrities advocating not necessarily for going completely vegetarian but for reducing meat consumption, like Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Thompson, Moby and famous chefs including Jamie Oliver.
But let's stop talking about it, and instead let's hear directly from Simon Bryant, an Australian Pulse Advocate, on why this campaign is so important. His interview on the National Broadcaster in Australia, ABC, starts about 2 minutes into this recording: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programitem/perwDOy7jQ?play=true.
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Amidst fears that global warming could zap a vital source of protein that has sustained humans for centuries, CGIAR bean breeders announced today the discovery of 30 new types, or lines as plant breeders refer to them, of “heat-beater” beans that could keep production from crashing in large swaths of bean-dependent Latin America and Africa.
Often called the “meat of the poor” for the affordable protein it provides, the crop is a vital foundation of food security for more than 400 million people in the developing world. Beans are a highly nutritious food, offering protein, fiber, complex carbohydrates, vitamins and other micronutrients. In addition to heat tolerance, experts from the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes are simultaneously breeding for higher iron content to enhance the beans’ nutritional value.
“This discovery could be a big boon for bean production because we are facing a dire situation where, by 2050, global warming could reduce areas suitable for growing beans by 50 percent,” said Steve Beebe, a senior CGIAR bean researcher.
“Incredibly, the heat-tolerant beans we tested may be able to handle a worst-case scenario where the build-up of greenhouse gases causes the world to heat up by an average of 4 degrees Celsius (about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit),” he said. “Even if they can only handle a 3 degree rise, that would still limit the bean production area lost to climate change to about five percent. And farmers could potentially make up for that by using these beans to expand their production of the crop in countries like Nicaragua and Malawi, where beans are essential to survival.”
CGIAR researchers had previously warned that rising temperatures were likely to disrupt bean production in Nicaragua, Haiti, Brazil, and Honduras, while in Africa, those warnings had focused on Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the most vulnerable, followed by Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya.
“As a result of this breakthrough, beans need not be the casualty of global warming that they seemed destined to be, but rather can offer a climate-friendly option for farmers struggling to cope with rising temperatures,” said Andy Jarvis, a CGIAR climate change expert.
Read the full article here: http://www.cgiar.org/consortium-news/beans-that-beat-the-heat/
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Plant-derived proteins provide an ideal answer to the increasing demand for nutritious protein-rich food, now and into the future as population growth further increases the need for proteins. However, many plant proteins available today have lost functionality during the isolation and drying processes. Scientists around the world are trying to find ways to developed a proven, affordable preparation process to improve plant protein quality, ready for wide application into food today.
Laurice Pouvreau, Project manager of the Plant Proteins in NIZO, a company based in The Netherlands highlighted that : “The problem with many plant derived proteins is that during extraction and further processing, they lose functionality: the flavor deteriorates and they lose their solubility as proteins are denatured. Therefore, they unfortunately end up being used for animal feed.”