BACKGROUND: Boreal cropping systems are heavily focused on the production of small-grain cereals; to improve their resilience to climate change and to achieve food and feed security, diversification is needed. This study investigated the potential of faba bean, narrow-leafed lupin and lentil as protein crops in southern Finland, where faba bean is traditional but the other two are novel.

Mixed cropping, including intercropping, is the oldest form of systemized agricultural production and involves the growing of two or more species or cultivars of the same species simultaneously in the same field. However, mixed cropping has been little by little replaced by sole crop systems, especially in developed countries. Some of the advantages of mixed cropping are, for example, resource use efficiency and yield stability, but there are also several challenges, such as weed management and competition. The boreal-nemoral region lies within the region 55 to 70 • N. In this area, for example in Finland, the length of the thermal growing season varies from >105 to over 185 days. Typically, variation between locations and years is marked. However, during the year, there can be a wide range of temperature extremes between −70 and +30 • C. The majority of cropping systems in this region are usually monocultures, except for forage grass mixtures. The possibility of having several crops in a mixture is very challenging in the region due to the short growing season and extreme cold temperatures, meaning that crop earliness and overwintering capacity are a considerable restriction for year-round mixed cropping. A further restriction is the quality requirements set by the industry. Our review will explore a range of mixed cropping possibilities for the boreal-nemoral region, including different possible combinations of spring, winter, perennial, biennial, catch, and cover crops. The reviewed mixed cropping systems could considerably improve the sustainability and efficiency of crop production.

Predicting and understanding the progress towards flowering in faba bean are important to achieve the adaptation and high productivity of the crop under varying environmental conditions. Traditional controlled-environment experiments showed that the rate of progress towards flowering was dependent mainly on photoperiod and temperature. Here, we highlight the need to include measures of solar radiation and water deficit in order to achieve an adequate model for field conditions. The improved model was assessed in two steps: first with a "basic" model across all 20 cultivars and then with an "extended" model that included terms to fit exceptional cultivars. The two new parameters were necessary to achieve an acceptable fit of progress towards flowering and clearly separated two cultivars, "Kontu" and "Witkiem Manita," that were significantly quicker to flower than the other 18, which fit a single line. As the regression coefficients of the two exceptional cultivars differed only in intercept, not slope, we conclude that flowering responses to day length, temperature, solar radiation and drought stresses were consistent in this set of germplasm and that the two cultivars differed in earliness "per se." Growth-chamber experiments added information about differing ceiling temperatures for progress to flowering in four cultivars and different sensitivities to supraoptimal temperatures.

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Drought is one of the most important abiotic stresses that causes significant reductions in crop yield, and thushinders the food security of the growing world population. In consequence, it is urgent to select crops able toresist drought, maintain high yield and have a good nutritive content. The purpose of this project was toevaluate the responses of different accessions of Andean lupin to drought stress, and identify if there aresignificant differences in their physiological responses.To identify germplasm for further investigation, thirty accessions of Lupinus mutabilis Sweet. and oneaccession of L. albococcineus Hort. were screened in two sets, A of 15 and B of 16 accessions. From thesesets, four lines were chosen on the basis of extreme values in the measurements, and this set of four wasinvestigated in depth (set C). Water stress consisted of controlled water loss from the soil (at 2% per day).The screening techniques used were: leaf temperature, stomatal conductance, relative water content, waterpotential, ion membrane leakage, and shoot dry weight were measured and transpiration efficiency wascalculated. In addition, carbon isotope discrimination, root length, root dry matter, proline content andsoluble sugar content were included in only set C.Based on the results from set A and set B, accessions PI 457981, PI 457972, and AC 2792 were consideredas being drought resistant and PI 510572 was considered as drought sensitive. However, the results from setC showed that accession PI 510572 is able to adapt its cell membrane to the drought stress so that its ionleakage is less than in the other accessions, and in addition it has the ability to accumulate higherconcentrations of osmoprotectants.Thus, this survey identified that some accessions of Andean lupin were able to avoid drought stress throughstomatal traits and root traits, and others that were able to tolerate drought through the accumulation ofosmotically active substances. Consequently, there are good prospects for breeding of Andean lupin toimprove its drought resistance.

Legumes are an important component of sustainable crop rotations around the world, but are under-represented in European agriculture. Finnish use of grain legumes is exceptionally low. These experiments were initiated to test the possibility of extending the range of grain legumes that can be grown in Finland. A small range of germplasm of blue lupin, white lupin, lentil and some other annual species were tested in a trial that also included familiar cultivars of faba bean. Faba bean yields were 6.0 – 7.3 Mg ha-1, blue lupin yields 3.3 – 4.8 Mg ha-1. Two of the cultivars of blue lupin reached maturity in a timely fashion, showed little disease and did not lodge, so they have potential for use in the national agricultural system. Lentils also ripened, but presented management problems that require further investigation. White lupin showed potential as a producer of biomass, with one cultivar exceeding 18 Mg ha-1 dry matter.

Crop yields in Finland are limited by many factors, such as the short growing season and spring drought. Thus earliness is an important breeding goal in Finnish agriculture, and is especially needed in some crops such as faba bean that have a longer growing period than cereals. During 2009-2011, 400 accessions of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) from 34 countries were evaluated for morpho-physiological traits related to drought resistance and the earliest accessions were identified. The four earliest accessions, from Cyprus and Syria, were sown in a pot experiment, together with Kontu and Witkiem Manita (an early-flowering, large-seeded Dutch cultivar) in order to determine days to flowering, podding and maturity under controlled conditions. The experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with 3 replicates. There were highly significant differences for all studied traits (p<0.001). Accessions D497, D557 and D505 had significantly faster progress to flowering and podding compared to Kontu. Accession D497 was the earliest genotype with 947 GDD (Growing degree-days to maturity), followed by accession D557 (985 GDD), and Kontu and Witkiem Manita were latest accessions in this study (1165 and 1159 GDD, respectively). The linkage of early flowering and early maturity to large seed size needs to be tested. These accessions may be valuable sources of earliness that could be used in faba bean breeding for short seasons such as those in Finland.