The ancient Greeks, notably Hippocrates, were pretty wary of grasspea (Lathyrus sativa). They figured if they ate too much they’d get some neurological disorders.

The stigma of grasspea still persists today in many parts of the world.
Last month I joined a team from the Crop Trust‘s BOLD Project to visit researchers and farmers in India and Bangladesh to learn more about grasspea. ICARDA’s Shiv Kumar Agrawal led us on a journey to Bhopal, New Delhi, Kolkata, Gazipur, Ishurdi and Rangpur.

And I had two takeaways from that journey.

First … wow! Grasspea is a remarkably hardy and minimally demanding crop. Farmers just need to sow the seeds on often marginal lands and come back 100 to 120 days later and harvest. It’s an incredibly low input crop. We saw a 28-acre verdant field of it in West Bengal, India and we saw it thriving better than weeds on a char in the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh.

Sure it grows well … but will anyone eat it? No doubt about it. In West Bengal, I tried the tender tips cooked in oil and garlic and went begging for more. In Gazipur, I tried the peas made into a dry dal and wanted the recipe. Tasty and high in protein.

Secondly … ODAP and lathyrism? Hmmm … didn’t really see much concern about it amongst the farmers or researchers. Notably, we didn’t visit during a time of drought or famine when grasspea consumption … and ODAP levels … can rise. The concern about normal consumption is more about the stigma. How can the stigma be removed so more consumers worldwide accept this climate-resilient crop as part of a balanced part of their diet?

Shiv and his team has been working on that. In an ongoing pre-breeding project, the crop breeders have developed low-ODAP lines derived from crop wild relatives. The BOLD team is trailing some of those lines across South Asia and showing some promising results.

All images used on this page were photographed by Michael Major for the Crop Trust and used here under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.