Horticulture professor Irvin Widders, the director of the Legume Innovation Lab at MSU, said his lab works with other universities across the country and the world to find solutions for hunger ­— and one of their solutions is grain legumes.

He said grain legumes, such as kidney beans and black-eyed peas, are a protein and nutrient-rich food source that are cost effective to grow and harvest.

Widders said grain legumes are very important crops for small-scale farmers in underdeveloped rural and urban areas in some African and Latin American countries.

“It’s a crop that is fundamentally grown by poor working families,” he said. “Rural women in poverty find themselves locked in poverty — a vicious cycle ­— and beans can provide a way that can tangibly benefit them.”

The research lab, formerly known as the Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program, is involved in Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Nicaragua and Haiti, among other African and Latin American countries, he said.

The entire project will fund at least 12 sub-projects, ranging from developing more climate-resilient plants to distribute to farmers, and conducting nutritional research involving how grain legumes can enhance the human diet, he said.

MSU was awarded the largest grant in this round, said Cynthia Donovan, the deputy director of the Legume Innovation Lab.

The grant will support the project through September 2017.

Graduate student Gerardine Mukeshimana, who is from Rwanda, has researched grain legumes and has witnessed first-hand the need for a sustainable food source at home.

She said it also is important for these crops to be accessible to the working women who have to produce them for their families.

“Where I come from, it’s an important food crop,” she said.