Which crop biodiversity is used by the food industry throughout the world? A first evidence for legume species.

Abstract

Abstract Food biodiversity is a challenging issue for sustainable agri-food systems, particularly in the European one-health context. Most often studied at the levels of agricultural systems and food diets, few works examined plant species diversity used in food products. As the market is a main driver for farmers’ crop choices, analyzing how crop biodiversity is supported by the food industry will inform actions to promote it. By text-mining the ingredient lists of nearly 350,000 packaged food products extracted from the MINTEL database, we first provide a market assessment of legume biodiversity in processed food over the last decade, on a global scale. Soy appears as the major global legume crop for food, and there is still a clear lack of pulse diversity reflected in food products; some progress however was observed over the last years - particularly in Europe. Results suggest that lock-in continues to hamper stronger crop biodiversity.