2016’s “International Year of Pulses” has put this protein-packed food group under the spotlight

But did you know that on AGRIS you can access thousands of texts about lentils, chickpeas, and every pulse in between?


2016 is gearing up to be a busy year– the 68th UN General Assembly declared it the International Year of Pulses (IYP), and one of our contributions to this important initiative is through AGRIS (International System for Agricultural Science and Technology).

Maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), this search-discovery tool contains over 8 million bibliographic references to agricultural research and technology. That’s a large scope, and in terms of some of the world’s better known pulses – lentils, chickpeas, peas and beans - this equates up to 50,000 bibliographic references and texts.

You can filter results to only include those with links to a corresponding “full text” article by clicking on “get classical view” and setting the “full text” filter. Currently there are upwards of 6,000 for beans, and more than 2,000 for peas. You can also refine searches by language, date, country and content type (see the box to the right of the results page). Searching is quick – you don’t need to be registered with AGRIS.

AGRIS has a large international network to thank. Over 150 institutions in 65 countries contribute to its multilingual mix of scientific and technical reports, theses, conference papers, journals, books, government publications and more.

Currently around 20% of these records have a corresponding full text document on the web, and going forward you can expect this number to grow.

AGRIS is available in English, Spanish and French and is easy to pick up and use - “How It Works” will teach you the basics 

In the meantime, keep up to date with all things pulses on the IYP website and catch them on Twitter at @LovePulses. Don’t forget to share – this is the year of pulses and it’s all about maximum coverage!