Food security, lowering the risk of climate change and meeting the increasing demand for energy will increasingly be critical challenges in the years to come. Producing sustainably is therefore becoming central in agriculture and food systems. Legume crops could play an important role in this context by delivering multiple services in line with sustainability principles. In addition to serving as fundamental, worldwide source of high-quality food and feed, legumes contribute to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, as they release 5–7 times less GHG per unit area compared with other crops; allow the sequestration of carbon in soils with values estimated from 7.21 g kg−1 DM, 23.6 versus 21.8 g C kg−1 year; and induce a saving of fossil energy inputs in the system thanks to N fertilizer reduction, corresponding to 277 kg ha−1 of CO2 per year. Legumes could also be competitive crops and, due to their environmental and socioeconomic benefits, could be introduced in modern cropping systems to increase crop diversity and reduce use of external inputs. They also perform well in conservation systems, intercropping systems, which are very important in developing countries as well as in low-input and low-yield farming systems. Legumes fix the atmospheric nitrogen, release in the soil high-quality organic matter and facilitate soil nutrients’ circulation and water retention. Based on these multiple functions, legume crops have high potential for conservation agriculture, being functional either as growing crop or as crop residue.

In the last decade, there has been an increase in the use of sprouted grains in human diet and a parallel increase in the scientific literature dealing with their nutritional traits and phytochemical contents. This review examines the physiological and biochemical changes during the germination process, and the effects on final sprout composition in terms of macro- and micro-nutrients and bioactive compounds. The main factors affecting sprout composition are taken into consideration: genotype, environmental conditions experimented by the mother plant, germination conditions. In particular, the review deepens the recent knowledge on the possible elicitation factors useful for increasing the phytochemical contents. Microbiological risks and post-harvest technologies are also evaluated, and a brief summary is given of some important in vivo studies matching with the use of grain sprouts in the diet. All the species belonging to Poaceae (Gramineae) family as well as pseudocereals species are included.

Plant stress detection is considered one of the most critical areas for the improvement of crop yield in the compelling worldwide scenario, dictated by both the climate change and the geopolitical consequences of the Covid-19 epidemics. A complicated interconnection of biotic and abiotic stressors affect plant growth, including water, salt, temperature, light exposure, nutrients availability, agrochemicals, air and soil pollutants, pests and diseases. In facing this extended panorama, the technology choice is manifold. On the one hand, quantitative methods, such as metabolomics, provide very sensitive indicators of most of the stressors, with the drawback of a disruptive approach, which prevents follow up and dynamical studies. On the other hand qualitative methods, such as fluorescence, thermography and VIS/NIR reflectance, provide a non-disruptive view of the action of the stressors in plants, even across large fields, with the drawback of a poor accuracy. When looking at the spatial scale, the effect of stress may imply modifications from DNA level (nanometers) up to cell (micrometers), full plant (millimeters to meters), and entire field (kilometers). While quantitative techniques are sensitive to the smallest scales, only qualitative approaches can be used for the larger ones. Emerging technologies from nuclear and medical physics, such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography, are expected to bridge the gap of quantitative non-disruptive morphologic and functional measurements at larger scale. In this review we analyze the landscape of the different technologies nowadays available, showing the benefits of each approach in plant stress detection, with a particular focus on the gaps, which will be filled in the nearby future by the emerging nuclear physics approaches to agriculture.

Sprouts and microgreens have attracted tremendous interest across multiple disciplines in recent years. Here, we critically review the most recent advances to underscore research prospects and niches, and related challenges, not yet addressed or fully pursued. In particular, we report a number of themes that merit special attention as a result of their relevance to plant science, nutrition, health, and zootechnics: (1) species not yet or inadequately investigated, such as wild plants, and fruit tree strains; (2) abiotic and biotic factors, and biostimulants, for elicitation strategies and metabolic engineering; (3) sanitization and processing technologies to obtain high-quality products; (4) digestive fate and impact of bioactive elements, antinutrients, and allergens on human nutrition; (5) experimental challenges to researching health benefits; (6) the opportunity to generate natural product libraries for drug discovery; and (7) sprouts in animal feeding to improve both animal health and the nutritional value of animal products for the human diet. The convergence of different themes involving interdisciplinary competencies advocate fascinating research pursuits, for example, the elicitation of metabolic variants to generate natural product collections for identification and selection of bioactive chemicals with a role as nutraceuticals, key constituents of functional foods, or interactive partners of specific drugs.