Legumes Improve Our Livelihood!

Date : December 2, 2016
Venue : U Thant International Conference Hall, United Nations University (53-70,Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan)

Program

Opening Remarks     

Masa Iwanaga  President, JIRCAS

Welcome Address(1)

Masamichi Saigo  Director General, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Council Secretariat, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF)

Welcome Address(2)

Kazuhiko Takemoto  Director, Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, United Nations University (UNU-IAS)

Keynote Speeches

• Potential of legumes: Global needs and challenges
  David Bergvinson  Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) 
• The acceptance of soybean and groundnut into southeast Asia -From "10,000 years history of legumes and man"-
  Kazumi Maeda  Professor Emeritus of Kochi University 

Session 1: Legumes in agriculture: Sustainability, environment, and development

• An overview of legume cultivation in Japan 
  Makita Hajika  Director, Field Crop Research Division, Institute of Crop Science, NARO
• Legume-based cropping systems for improving soil environments in sub-Saharan Africa
  Robert Abaidoo  Professor, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana 
• Impact pathways of legumes: Increasing bean productivity and nutritional quality of family diets in the Western Highlands of Guatemala
  Gretchen Neisler  Director, Center for Global Connections in Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Michigan State University (MSU), USA 

Session 2: Legumes all over the world: Use of the diversity for improvement

• Importance of pulses research in India: Chickpea and pigeonpea
  Girish Prasad Dixit  Project Coordinator, Indian Institute of Pulses Research, India 
• Domestication genes and stress adaptation genes in the genus Vigna for sustainable agriculture under stress environments
  Norihiko Tomooka  Genetic Resources Coordinator, Genetic Resources Center, NARO 
• Toward the development of soybean varieties resistant to rust disease
  Naoki Yamanaka  Senior Researcher, JIRCAS 

Session 3: Livelihood with legumes: Value addition and nutritional enhancement

• Contribution of legumes to smallholder agriculture and livelihood sustenance in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi, Ghana and Guinea
  Yaw Agyeman Boafo  Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science, The University of Tokyo 
  Linda Chinangwa  United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability
  Boubacar Siddighi Balde  Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science, The University of Tokyo 
• Nutrition improvement of children in Africa using soybean as a major protein source
  Yasuhiko Toride  Director, R&D Planning Department, Ajinomoto Co. Ltd., Japan 
• Beans & pulses in the world
  Kiyomi Hasegawa  President, Beniyabis, Beniya Hasegawa Store, Japan

Session 4: Panel Discussion

Moderators: Kunihiro Doi and Satoshi Tobita
Panelists: David Bergvinson, Robert Abaidoo, Gretchen Neisler

Closing Remarks

Osamu Koyama  Vice President, JIRCAS