The history of legumes 2.2. Evolution of large legumes cultivation Its presence in different farming systems has been a constant throughout the centuries. However, this situation began to change from the 19th century due to a progressive change in eating habits (since the Western society was becoming more prosperous, replacing vegetable protein for animal one. In the middle of 20th century another event reduced the interest of the legumes cultivation: the ammonia synthesis was discovered. Consequently, the nitrogen fertilizer appeared and made it unnecessary the important role of legumes in the soil. The rotations were abandoned, and during a lot of years another type of cultivation has been developed, based on more profitable species as grains or industrial crops. Therefore, due to the absence of interest, the research effort diminished and the efficiency was stopped (Table 1); the improvement, in general, entered in a vicious circle that made many years go down the area devoted to these crops. The only exception was notorious soybean, but it has already been mentioned that it has got an oily planting. On contrary, it is possible to see that grains (wheat and rice) experienced a significant increase in performance over the period. Seeing the energy crisis of 1973, there has been a review of the situation: on the one hand, a poor harvest of soybeans in the USA noted the existence of Europe´s huge dependence with the respect to soybeans as a basis of rations, especially for non-ruminant animals. One the other hand, the artificial synthesis of nitrogen required the use of fonts of nonrenewable energy which made the product even more expensive. Since then, the interest towards legumes cultivation has gradually increased.