GLIP logo explained 

Grain Legumes Integrated Project: an overview

1. Background to GLIP
2. GLIP's objectives
3. GLIP - the programme of work
4. GLIP - project structure

1. The background to GLIP

The European Union faces the challenge of providing high quality protein for both animal and human consumption. This task has been made more difficult by the removal of key animal-derived sources because of the occurrence of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE or ‘mad cow disease’).

A significant contribution to fulfilling the demand for safe protein sources can be made by the cultivation of grain legumes such as peas, beans and lupins. These crops are rich in protein, starch, fibre and other essential nutrients and valuable in the production of foodstuffs and feed.

Grain legumes can also assist in improving the sustainability of farming in Europe. Grain legumes naturally fix atmospheric nitrogen, which provides a vital nutrient for their growth and maintains soil fertility for subsequent crops in rotations. This ability of grain legumes to utilise nitrogen moderates the need for artificial fertilisers thus saving money and lessening the impact of such chemicals on the environment by reducing contamination of water courses and the effects of their production (high energy input and CO2 emissions).

An indirect benefit of growing grain legumes is the change they introduce in crop rotations, currently dominated by cereals. By acting as break-crops grain legumes slow the build-up of cereal pests, diseases and weeds thus reducing the need for pesticides in subsequent cereal crops.

Despite these advantages, grain legumes are underused in European agriculture. Currently only 5% of Europe’s arable land are cultivated with grain legumes compared with 15-30% elsewhere. One effect of this is that Europe imports about 70% of its plant protein requirement each year.

The principal reason for the reluctance of European farmers to grow grain legumes is yield inconsistency caused by a range of abiotic (drought and nutrition) and biotic (disease, weed and morphological properties) stresses. The European R&D effort on developing solutions to these production constraints is relatively new and disparate and has yet to introduce sufficient yield stability to persuade farmers to plant grain legumes on a larger scale. Some research areas such as the effects of legume seed composition on animal feed quality have been insufficiently researched.

These production constraints need to be addressed if European farmers, and others, are to be encouraged to grow more grain legume crops to reduce the short-fall in vegetable protein production on the continent.

In recognition of importance of grain legumes to the future of European farming, the European Union agreed to co-fund the Grain Legumes Integrated Project, or GLIP for short, a four year project bringing together a large group of European scientific research institutions (and beyond) currently involved in tackling the fundamental problems of improving grain legume production.

2. GLIP’s objectives

GLIP will mobilise and integrate European scientific research on grain legumes to solving the problems facing European farmers in producing consistent yield of grain legumes by addressing the following objectives:

(1) To identify optimal parameters for legumes in feed quality and safety, including GMOs while using legumes to develop healthy and sustainable agriculture.

(2) To investigate variation in grain legume seed composition and the factors affecting it.

(3) To develop new genetic, genomic, post-genomic and bioinformatic tools to improve and sustain grain legume seed production and quality.

To achieve these research objectives GLIP will integrate an ambitious combination of approaches, including biochemistry, plant & crop physiology, agronomy, plant genomics & breeding, and animal nutritional studies. Particular emphasis will be placed upon the use of state-of-the-art methodologies including genomics and bioinformatics, together with transcriptomics and metabolomics.

These research objectives are underpinned and complemented by a fourth objective to ensure the efforts of the scientific programme are appropriately organised and the products produced from it are properly disseminated to ensure maximum benefit is obtained. This is summarised as follows:

(4) To coordinate and integrate grain legume research, to provide training in emerging technological
approaches, to disseminate the results and transfer technology to industry.

3. GLIP – the programme of work

In order to fulfil the objectives of GLIP, the programme of work involves four main areas of activity:


• A programme of pure and applied agricultural research

• The coordination of the GLIP work-effort and the dissemination of knowledge from it.

• The formation of a technology transfer platform.

• The maintenance of a training fund to sustain grain legumes research.


The research programme will support the attainment of objectives 1-3, whilst the remaining activities will support objective 4.

4. GLIP - project structure

Each of GLIP’s objectives is fulfilled by the output of two linked Modules, each of which having their own clearly defined goals. Within these modules are a varying number of workpackages (WP): each WP defines a major and discrete area of research within each module.

schematic of the structure of GLIP

Although this section identifies the constituent units of GLIP, the integrated nature of the project must be emphasised. The project is structured in such a way that no modules or WPs work in isolation of any other and that all participants are encouraged to collaborate across boundaries.

In total GLIP has 8 modules and 19 WP – each of these are identified below (click on links for greater detail on the activities of each module and their constituent WPs).