ORIGINAL PAPER Crops that feed the world 3. Investing in lentil improvement toward a food secure world William Erskine & Ashutosh Sarker & Shiv Kumar Received: 20 January 2011 /Accepted: 23 March 2011 /Published online: 9 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. & International Society for Plant Pathology 2011 Abstract Lentils play a major role in the food and nutritional security of millions, particularly among low- income Asian families, because of the high protein content of their seed. As is the case for many pulses, lentils play an important role as a rotation crop, enhancing soil fertility and providing other environmental services in production systems. While its production has risen globally at 8.6 kg/ ha/year from 1961 to 2008, the major challenge is to increase investment in lentil improvement (both research and outreach) in countries where the crop is part of the production system. Where currently grown the major abiotic stresses are low moisture availability and high temperatures in spring, and winter cold at high elevations. Among biotic stresses, rust, and vascular wilt are key, and resistance has resulted in improvements in performance. Additional production constraints include the agronomic problems of pod loss, lodging and poor crop management. Adequate variability for most genetic constraints exists within the gene pool allowing breeding. However, several key traits, such as biomass yield, pod shed, nitrogen fixation and resistance to aphids are not currently address- able by breeding because of insufficient variation. Among lentil-producing developing countries, policies have not yet focused on lentil development needs to enhance food security and provide a remunerative rotation crop for cereals. Looking towards a future in which there is likely to be less water available to agriculture, climate change, food insecurity, rising costs for inorganic nitrogen fertilizer, and an increasingly nutrition-conscious society—collectively these give a bright future for a highly nutritious food produced by a nitrogen- fixing crop such as lentil adapted to the farming systems of marginal lands. Keywords Lentil . Pulse . Lens . Food legume . Productivity Introduction Lentils play an important role in the food and nutritional security of millions, particularly in Asia. Lentil grain is highly digestible and nutritious with high levels of protein, minerals and vitamins. The lentil plant (Lens culinaris Medikus subsp. culinaris) is a short bushy annual legume with small purse- like pods containing 1 or 2 lens-shaped seeds. Lentils were among the earliest of humankind’ s plant domesticates and associated with the start of the ‘agricultural revolution’ about 10,000 years ago in the Near East (Cubero et al. 2009). The crop is grown in rotation with cereals in the winter in Mediterranean and sub-tropical regions and as a summer crop in temperate and high elevation areas. Consumption and production Lentil consumption is primarily in Asia, where seven of the top 10 lentil producing countries lie (Table 1). Most W. Erskine (*) Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture (CLIMA), The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia e-mail: william.erskine@uwa.edu.au A. Sarker International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), NASC Complex, DPS Marg, Pusa Campus, New Delhi 110012, India S. Kumar ICARDA, PO Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria Food Sec. (2011) 3:127–139 DOI 10.1007/s12571-011-0124-5