The close proximity of these farmers to the Washington, DC metropolitan area where the international community is familiar with these crops can provide a market for these crops. The evaluations of chickpea, pigeonpea, and mungbean were conducted as replicated field experiments. The evaluations of faba bean and lupin germplasm were conducted by planting single row plots of each accession. Most chickpea world production is in India. The mature chickpea seed are used as a dry bean and green immature seed are used as a vegetable.
Chickpea is an annual plant generally requiring a cool season.
However, it can be planted in spring in Virginia. Chickpea has a deep tap root and is considered drought tolerant. The results of chickpea evaluations are presented in Table 1. Performance of desi and kabuli chickpea lines during 1993 when planted in March and harvested in July. 432 FABA BEAN Vicia faba L. is known to be an efficient nitrogen fixer and there is interest among farmers to grow faba bean as a vegetable crop to market the green beans in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.