Consumption patterns and usage of selected underutilized legumes in a Ghanaian community

Underutilized legumes are a good source of plant proteins, but they exhibit a hard‐to‐cook nature and poor digestibility due to the presence of anti‐nutritional factors. This study focused on the factors that drive the utilization of selected underutilized legumes in the Techiman municipality of Ghana. The legumes studied were Vigna subterrenea (Bambara groundnut), Cajanus cajan (Pigeon pea), Phaseolus lunatus (Lima bean), Parkia biglobosa (African Locust bean), and Canavalia gladiata (Sword bean). The survey provided insight into the familiarity, uses, preparation methods, and the extent of knowledge of their nutritional benefits. The demographics of the participants studied were also described, and statistical analysis was done using descriptive statistics. The results showed that the legumes were well recognized despite their underutilized status and they find use primarily in domestic savory food preparation. Consumption was mostly occasional despite the knowledge of its nutritional benefits. Processing mainly referred to boiling with prior removal of foreign materials and soaking in water. Nutrition stood out as the most desired property. Strategies aiming at maximizing the use of these legumes must be considered and developed since these legumes appear to be a formidable resource for combating the prevalent food insecurity in Africa.


| INTRODUCTION
Leguminous crops are valued all over the world as sustainable and cost-effective meat alternative in the provision of dietary protein.
They are considered the second most important food source after cereals (Maphosa & Jideani, 2017).Legumes also play important roles in preserving soil fertility and contribute to food security in developing countries (Daryanto et al., 2015).The cultivation of legumes is an old and common practice in Africa.Pulses, for example, have a long history as staple crop for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (Snapp et al., 2018).A major advantage of legumes over other crops is the ability to thrive in areas of low rainfall making them a suitable crop for the climatic condition experienced in several parts of Africa.They may serve as a source of income in the areas where they are cultivated as well as source of better nutrition.The major legumes found in Sub-Saharan Africa include common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), chickpea (Cicer arietinum), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), and Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) (Abate et al., 2012;Boafo et al., 2016;Popoola et al., 2023;Snapp et al., 2018).
In Ghana, agriculture forms a major part of the economic backbone.A variety of crops are grown across the six agroecological zones of the country.These agroecological zones are categorized as Sudan Savannah, Guinea Savannah, Coastal Savannah, Forest transitional zone, Deciduous Forest zone, and the Rain Forest zone.Ghana's agriculture is usually biased toward cash crops such as cocoa, oil palm, cotton, coconut, tobacco, groundnut, and rubber.This bias stems from the perspective that these cash crops are the driving factors for the country's economy.Many legumes are not considered cash crops and as such get very little attention in terms of cultivation, agro-input, and market channels.The cultivation of legumes is mostly done in the northern regions of the country.These regions fall in the Guinea Savannah and Sudan Savannah agroecological zones.This belt is characterized by long dry periods where there is very little rainfall and a short rainy season with recurrent intermittent droughts and or floods (Amikuzuno & Donkoh, 2012).The two most important edible legumes in Ghana are cowpea and groundnut.An average of 143,000 MT of cowpea is produced every year on about 156,000 ha of land making Ghana the fifth highest producer of cowpea in Africa (Haruna et al., 2018).
According to the World Data Atlas (2018), the production of pulses in Ghana increased from 12,000 tons in 1969 to 418,454 tons in 2018 growing at an average annual rate of 15.68%.It is possible that the increased demand for more food sources with population increase is a factor that has influenced this increase in cultivation.
Despite the increase in production of legumes, food needs are still unmet, as 50.2% of the population still experience hunger and food insecurity (Herforth et al., 2021).Several available legumes have great potential to meet the food and nutritional needs of the country but are neglected and remain underutilized.Production of such legumes is very low, and they only serve a niche community.Some of these underutilized legumes are not even cultivated at all but rather collected from the wild.These include Jack bean, Sword bean, Pigeon pea, Lima bean, Kidney beans, and Bambara groundnut.Where legume cultivation is done, they are often grown intercropped with other staples like maize.The order of importance with regard to legumes grown in Ghana is cowpea, groundnut, Bambara groundnut, and Lima bean (Asante et al., 2009).Their usage is generally restricted to domestic cooking for households with little utilization at industrial level.
There are several factors that hinder the use of underutilized legumes and stagnate their potential to advance into a staple food source.One such challenge is their "hardto-cook" nature.This makes their processing tedious, time, and energy consuming.Another challenge is their poor digestibility due to the presence of certain oligosaccharides and antinutrients, which hinder the absorption of the vital nutrients they contain.Such antinutrients include phytates, oxalates, tannins, saponins, and protease inhibitors (Faizal et al., 2023;Gilani et al., 2012;Mohan et al., 2015).Oligosaccharides present also include stachyose, verbascose, and raffinose (Vashishth et al., 2021).Notwithstanding, these underutilized legumes are a promising contender as a source of food for improved nutrition and food security.They are a good source of protein, fiber, and minerals.Their ability to survive harsh and adverse weather conditions implies that they are likely to withstand seasons where many other crops are likely to fail.This advantage could be harnessed to ensure their consistent production in all seasons.
Understanding the factors that drive the consumption of underutilized legumes within different settings and communities is key in harnessing their potential for the benefit of developing countries.This understanding is likely to foster tailored food security solutions using these underutilized legumes.This study was therefore carried out to examine the consumption patterns, usage, extent of familiarity, and knowledge of the benefits of consuming some selected underutilized legumes in Ghana.

| Focus legumes for the study
The studied underutilized legumes are Bambara groundnut (BAM), Pigeon pea (PIG), African Locust bean (ALB), Lima bean (LIM), and Sword bean (SWB).These legumes have been ascertained to have a high protein content comparable to animal protein from other studies.
They were selected because of the potential to harness their nutritional properties for dietary interventions.Figure 1 shows images of the underutilized legumes.

| Study area and period of the study
The survey was conducted at Techiman, the district capital of the Techiman municipality.A map of the Techiman municipal district is shown in Figure 2.This area is in the Bono East region of Ghana, which is within the middle belt.The community was chosen because prior studies identified the use and consumption of some underutilized legumes within the area (Ofosu et al., 2017).Techiman has a population size of 69,720.A sample size of 383 participants was used based on calculations at a 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error.Participants were selected randomly based on an inclusion and exclusion criteria.The field survey was done on market days in three major markets within Techiman from November 11 to 14, 2021.The market days were targeted because a wide array of people from other towns and regions within the country throng the commercial communities to transact business, thus opportunity for accessing a diverse population.

| Design of questionnaire
A structured questionnaire based on five objectives was used to conduct the survey.The objectives covered by the questionnaire were consumption patterns, modes of processing, and knowledge of the benefits of legume consumption.The demographics, including gender, age, level of education, and occupation, were also recorded.About 90% of the questions within the questionnaire were closed ended, and the questions were designed to focus on each underutilized legume individually with "YES" or "NO" response categories.The questionnaire was pretested on 40 respondents at the Ayeduase market located in the Ashanti region, Kumasi, and the necessary modifications were made before data collection at the specified study area.

| Sample selection and administration of questionnaire
A team of nine people was recruited and trained for the administration of the questionnaire.The predominant language of the selected community is the Akan language; therefore, the questionnaire was translated into the Akan language, and training of field workers was done in both the Akan and English languages.An informed consent document that contained details of the project and a signature form was filled after a respondent gave consent to be included in the study.The field workers administering the questionnaire patiently explained the project and its demands to potential participants.An individual was included after they had given their approval and signed the consent form.The inclusion criterium was all persons, male or female, who were 18 years and above.Persons below the age of 18 were excluded.Selection of the respondents was done randomly, and it took approximately 15 min to administer the questionnaire.

| Data analysis
The Descriptive statistics tool, particularly relative frequency, of the Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) software (20.0) was used to analyze the categorical variables of three key variables of interest: (i) consumption patterns, (ii) modes of preparation, and (iii) knowledge of nutritional benefits.To assess consumption patterns of the underutilized legumes, participant's knowledge about the legumes, their uses, time and frequency of consumption, and properties liked and disliked about the legumes were analyzed.The modes of preparation comprised the evaluation of the methods of processing and preprocessing procedures used to process the legumes.Participant's knowledge of the nutritional benefits of consuming the underutilized legumes and the specific benefits known was also analyzed.

| Sample description
The demographic data collected showed participation of both males and females with majority (84%) being female.The distribution in gender was somewhat expected given that the study was done in a commercial or market environment.Women in many parts of Ghana tend to be more involved in market activities compared to men.Young adults in the age range of 18 to 28 and 29 to 38 formed the majority of participants (58.5%).The highest form of education attained was mostly junior high school education (41.4%), which is the equivalent of middle school in the Western education system.About a quarter (25.8%) of the participants had undergone secondary school education, and less than 20% had no form of formal education.Trading was also the major form of occupation (75.3%), within the study area.
Table 1 shows the demographics as described above.

| Consumption patterns
A far greater percentage of the participants (50-85%) affirmed their knowledge of each of the legumes.In this study, knowledge of the legumes denotes an encounter with the legumes whether proximately or distally.The results give evidence to the fact that the legumes are recognized despite their underutilized status. Figure 3 illustrates the responses of participants on their familiarity or encounter with the legumes.Knowledge of Bambara groundnut was common with 84.9% affirming their knowledge, whereas African Locust bean was least known (50%).For many legumes, the primary use was as human food, where they were consumed after home preparation or bought from street food vendors.Occasionally, though, they were also used as animal feed but very rarely used as medicine (Table 2).No other uses were found for the studied legumes.Ghana where Bambara groundnut was used as a marker for small holder or underutilized legume crops reported weekly consumption as most frequent, followed by occasional consumption (Adzawla et al., 2016).Comparatively, a study in Australia found the frequency of legume consumption to be mostly two to four times per week (Figueira et al., 2019).The types of legumes studied as well as their availability and the type of demography present in both continents may be reasons why the frequency of consumption is dissimilar for both studies.This study attempted to uncover why usage of the underutilized legumes was not as frequent as other popular crops and gathered reasons such as difficulty in cooking, scarcity, and high cost during lean seasons.Nutrition ranked highest among the four properties liked about the legumes.Taste and healthy protein option ranked second and third, respectively.This suggests the concern of the populace for good nutrition when making food choices.The property least liked was the ease to cook, thus implying the hard-to-cook nature of these legumes, which has also been established by other researchers (Adzawla et al., 2016;Figueira et al., 2019;Mubaiwa et al., 2018).
Other properties liked about the legume were satiety, pleasant flavor when cooked, and relatively low cost when in season.The presence of foreign materials was the property most disliked about all the legumes followed by their difficulty to digest.The presence of foreign materials is mostly due to challenges with post-harvest practices that need to be addressed on a regional and national level.Participants disclosed getting stomach upset, bloating, and flatulence after the consumption of some of these legumes.This is consistent with reports from another study that emphasized the difficulty to digest Bambara groundnut (Adzawla et al., 2016).In the current study also, the hardto-cook nature was the second most disliked property about Bambara groundnut.Another study listed difficulty in cooking, bloating and constipation, and high cost during the lean season as the three major drawbacks preventing the wide-scale consumption and utilization of Bambara groundnut (Adzawla et al., 2016).The observation that the legumes were hard-to-cook is consistent with reports in many other parts of the world regarding the difficult-to-cook nature (Figueira et al., 2019).Table 2 continues to show the responses of participants on properties liked and disliked about the legumes.
In order to contextualize the results for the consumption patterns observed in this study, comparison is made to a report on the diet quality profile of Ghanaians (Herforth et al., 2021).The Ghanaian population has moderate dietary diversity with only 17% of adults consuming all five food groups typically recommended in food-based dietary guidelines.Food consumed by most of the populace comprises starchy foods like cassava, yam, and maize.Less than half of the population consume legumes, nuts, or seeds (Herforth et al., 2021).Food insecurity is at a rate of 50.2% (FAO et al., 2021) though 57% of the population are unable to afford a healthy diet (Laar et al., 2020).
Legumes thus form an important secondary source of protein, especially for children.Even though this study did not focus on the socioeconomic status of participants, it is important to note that the choice to consume legumes is mostly dependent on the economic status of people.When income is adequate, consumers typically prefer animal protein, even though this choice is usually very expensive and not sustainable.A gap is thus created for the exploration of alternative protein sources, such as the neglected and underutilized legumes assessed in this study, to meet nutritional needs and create a better food security system for the country.

| Modes of processing
The main method of processing used for the legumes was boiling.It involved placing a quantity of legumes in a cooking vessel, addition of water, and application of heat.The aim of boiling is to tenderize the legume and also improve the sensory appeal (Subuola et al., 2012).
Conventional processing techniques such as boiling also reduce antinutritional factors and make the nutrients in the legume more bioavailable (Kamboj & Nanda, 2018).One study done in the middle belt Note: A table of the consumption pattern for each of the legumes.The use as human food denotes using the legumes in a domestic dish and consuming at the household level or cooking the legumes to be sold as street food.Animal feed represents leftovers of cooked or uncooked legumes fed to domestic animals found within the household.Frequency of consumption refer to consumption of the legume at least once for any given frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, occasionally, and never).
T A B L E 2 (Continued) Note: A table of the consumption pattern for each of the legumes.The use as human food denotes using the legumes in a domestic dish and consuming at the household level or cooking the legumes to be sold as street food.Animal feed represents leftovers of cooked or uncooked legumes fed to domestic animals found within the household.Frequency of consumption refer to consumption of the legume at least once for any given frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, occasionally, and never).
of Ghana determined that the duration for cooking for most underutilized legumes was between 1 to 2 h, but for pigeon pea, it could take up to 5 h.Roasting was found to be rarely used (less than 10%) as a processing method before consumption for any of the legumes in this study.Other studies report grilling as a means of processing immature Bambara groundnut for consumption (Mayes et al., 2019).Frying, which in this study means the application of heat with the legume in oil, was not used at all.Other methods of processing used were drying and milling.African Locust bean was usually processed by fermentation.A study reported soaking, boiling, roasting, milling, and several combinations of these as methods of processing Bambara groundnut in Zimbabwe (Mubaiwa et al., 2018).Another study presented conventional and advanced methods such as boiling, autoclaving, roasting, cracking, germination, irradiation, and sonication as processing methods for the effective utilization of velvet bean (Baby et al., 2022).
Additional information collected by the survey revealed that the legumes were mostly used in savory dishes involving the inevitable addition of salt to impart the characteristic savory taste.Other ingredients added were onions, tomatoes, pepper, Chile Salt Petre, and garden eggs.Ground Lima bean was noted as being used as a thickener for soups and stews, while fermented African Locust bean was used as a flavor enhancer.Palm oil was also added especially when preparing Bambara groundnut and Pigeon pea as a pottage even though in some communities, palm base was used as the boiling medium instead of plain water (Ofosu et al., 2017).Even though the legumes themselves are high in protein, some form of animal protein such as dry fish was sometimes added.Sugar could be added when using Bambara groundnut, but this was also rarely done."Maggi" bouillon cube (a source of monosodium glutamate), garlic, and shea butter were also mentioned as ingredients used during preparation to impart taste and flavor.Sorting to remove foreign materials was most often done before using the legumes, but soaking was the primary pre-processing treatment done before cooking.Table 3 details the mode of processing of the studied underutilized legumes.There may be the need to engage food technologists to research and proffer optimized conditions of processing in order to reduce the tedious nature and expense of energy, while preserving nutrients when processing these legumes.

| Knowledge of the nutritional benefit of legumes
Legumes are generally known to have health and nutritional benefits, and the association be-tween consumption of legumes and reduced incidence of some non-communicable diseases has been reported in studies (Faris et al., 2009;Gulzar & Minnaar, 2017;Kamboj & T A B L E 3 Modes of processing the legume.Note: A table of the modes of processing of each legume.The table shows the most utilized modes of processing.Boiling denotes cooking the legume seeds whole in water or as a part of a domestic dish.Frying refers to placing the legume in oil with the addition of heat for a given period of time.Roasting denotes addition of heat to the dried uncooked legume in a vessel without the addition of any form of oil.Soaking denotes the immersion the legume in room temperature water for a period of time.
F I G U R E 4 Knowledge of the nutritional benefit of the legume.A graph of the knowledge of the nutritional benefit of each legume.Each legume was assessed independently.The graph shows the percentage of participants that affirmed their knowledge of the nutritional benefits of each of the legumes.
Nanda, 2018; Maphosa & Jideani, 2017;Nwadi et al., 2020).The question was then raised as to whether participants of this study, with or without affirmed knowledge of the legumes, had knowledge of the benefits of consuming legumes and whether they knew what exactly those benefits were.Figures 4 and 5 show the results of this assessment.For all the legumes studied, more than 50% of the respondents affirmed knowing what legumes do for the body upon consumption.
Probing further to know the specific knowledge these respondents had concerning the legumes, the greatest number asserted legumes were a source of energy (more than 48%) and body building (>36%).
Very few indicated that the legumes protect from diseases.Other researchers have found respondents asserting similar knowledge about legumes.One study reported that over 95% of participants agreed that legumes were a good source of proteins and over 50% asserted that the consumption of legumes helps to control blood sugar (Figueira et al., 2019).

| CONCLUSIONS
The evaluation of the consumption patterns and usage of five underutilized legumes within a Ghanaian community presented a high potential as a food source.The consumers' familiarity with the legumes indicated their potential as nutritious, food security resource among the wider population in similar indigenous areas.Processing of the legumes for consumption by boiling could be optimized through technologies and processes that target the time required to tenderize the hard-to-cook nature of the legumes while preserving the nutritional value.Lima beans could be a resource to be exploited for ready-to-use soup thickeners that offer additional nutritional benefits.Consumption of the legumes was mostly occasional.The frequency of consumption can be improved through innovative product development processes, utilization, and good agricultural and proper post-harvest handling coupled with the sensitization of the importance of these legumes.Thus, serious research attention on these legumes could set Ghana and Africa on the path to achieving some of the sustainable development goals.
F I G U R E 5 Specific benefit known of the legumes.A graph of nutritional specific benefit known of the legumes.Each legume was assed independently.The graph shows the knowledge participants had about the specific nutritional benefit each legume offered.
Participants has high knowledge on the energy giving and body building benefits of the legumes.Knowledge on disease protection properties of each of the legumes was lowest.

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I G U R E 3 Familiarity of participants with the legumes.A graph of the familiarity of participants with each of the legumes.Each legume was assessed independent of another.The y axis shows the percentage of participants that affirmed their familiarity with legume through personal encounter or by other means.The x axis shows each individual legume.T A B L E 2 Consumption patterns of selected underutilized legumes.
Table 2 also shows the timeof consumption for each of the legumes.The legumes studied were mostly a source of midday meals.Participants explained that consuming the legume at midday allowed enough time for digestion since, by T A B L E 1 Sociodemographic variables of participants Note: The survey was conducted in Techiman in the Bono east region of Ghana.A total of 349 responses were analyzed.The table shows the count and percentage of the participants for each category of demographic variable assessed.Age is represented as various ranges from 18 to 59 years and above.Education represents the highest level of education attained by the participants at the time of the survey.
Abbreviations: JHS, junior high school; SHS, senior high school.theirexperience,lateconsumption of the legumes usually led to bloating and other gastrointestinal discomfort the following morning.Even though they were mostly a midday meal, they could also be consumed as breakfast, dinner, or anytime.African Locust bean was not indicated as a lunchtime food option relative to the other legumes.It was rather added to soups, stews, and sauces as a fermented condiment, and quantities used were much smaller, explaining the distribution in frequencies regarding the time-of-day African Locust bean was mostly consumed.As shown in Table2, the consumption of legumes occasionally was most frequent.A study done in the Northern region of