Some countries produce large amounts of pulses, but these are not a part of their respective diets. How can the use of pulses be increased in communities where these crops do not play an important role in the local cuisine/traditional meals?
View: One of the critical issue to look into is working on social factors and customs. There are hundreds if not thousands of traditional preparations and consumption habits in the world of pulses. So with the recently emerging issues in making pulses part of the diets of the riches as a consequence of health, driving the culture that encourage mass population could be improved. It is about the food industrial application part of pulse , that still is too far behind, that make its utilization limited. It is also important to make a learning processes of pulses from most consumers to least consumers tradition.
Do you have any examples on how the consumption of pulses contributes to household food security and nutrition in your community or country, which may be useful in different contexts?
View: yes. There are different preparations and consumption habit in my community. In Ethiopia, coffee ceremony is always accompanied by snacks , which often is made out of pulses. Curry /shiro/which is best compatible staple food with Enjera, have already been co-evolved over centuries and well serving as staple food of the community. Ethiopia as producer of some 15+ species of pulses, and with some 80 different traditional community of 100 million population, could demonstrate the diverse but strong utilization of pulses as food and nutrition sources.
What are the main challenges that farmers in your country face with regard to the production of pulses? How should these be addressed?
view: the seed system is poorly developed. poor investment is made in pulse research and development. poor involvement of the Pvt sector. weak policy support on radically changing the sector.
soln: The public system is mainstreaming an innovative approach of seed system enhancement by coordinating the farming community into seed production sources, with limited incentives. The PvT is expected to share some of the areas in seed. The govt/pvt is to make substantial investment in the sector to respond best for market, consumption and agricultural health. The R4D part has to be capacitated like happening in other crops.
Are you aware of any research or studies on the role of pulses in climate change adaptation or mitigation? Please share them with us.
view yes: some of the attribution with pulses is by substituting the chemical N source fertilizer b/c of their ability to fix N2 from the air. By this it contributes for reduction of GHG emission into the air.
The International Year of Pulses also includes a call for recipes to provide ideas and inspiration on how to consume these nutritious seeds. Would you like to share yours?
View; we did competition at national level of recipes made out of pulses. The idea was to enhance its application among the public. We learnt a lot on the industrial pathways of the competitors recipes/products that can easily be transferred into a standard industrial products. We had also the chance to collect taste preference and got interesting feedbacks.
Asnake Fikre