ABSTRACT
Grain legumes play a major role in constituting the food safety and nutritional security program around the globe by providing a high-quality protein complementary diet to the vegetarian populations. Legume crops not only improve the socioeconomic development of growing countries but also play a crucial role and ensure safety and balancing the environmental conditions with a major contribution to global biological nitrogen cycle completion. The total global arable land under legume crop production is about 80.75 million hectares, producing 73 million tons with a typical production of 904 kg/hectare. However, the grain legumes are under severe menace of almost 200 insect species that pose threats and are a major hurdle in the way of global food and nutrition security mission worldwide. To tackle this problem, eco-friendly biological control agent (BCA)-based formulations also known as biopesticides including Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have been employed worldwide in integrated plant pest management. Bt synthesizes a range of toxins (Sip, Vip, Cry, and Cyt) based on its physiological conditions during growth and colonization, out of which Cry toxin is majorly used. This chapter discusses the pest management problems associated with major grain legumes that are experimented with different Bt Cry proteins to develop transgenic legume crops having integrated pest management against their specific pest.
