Testing and promotion of mungbean in cereal fallows in the low hills and terai agroecosystems of Nepal.

In Nepal, grain legumes are an important part of the daily diet and are grown both as sole-intercrop. With the decline of chickpea cultivation due to high incidence of pests and the reduced popularity of grasspea because of consumers’ increasing awareness of its toxicity, Nepalese farmers have been searching for other leguminous crops to grow. Testing and promotion of mungbean was initiated as part of a drive to integrate legumes into cereal fallows (land that remains fallow after the harvest of rice, maize or wheat) in 2002. After mungbean varieties from the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Centre (AVRDC) were tested in the summer and autumn seasons in 2002, huge demand for mungbean was observed. This led to massive promotion of mungbean in 2003 through farmer participatory trials and informal research and development (IRD) across 13 districts in the low hills and terai ecosystems of the country. Planted mostly in fallows without the application of any supplemental fertilizer or irrigation, the mungbeans had generally low yield levels. However, the overwhelming majority of participant farmers preferred AVRDC varieties over local cultivars for most agronomic and post harvest traits including earliness, yield, pod and grain size, grain colour, smell and taste. Improved mungbean varieties hold great promise as a catch crop in diverse cropping patterns.