Chickpea

The chickpea or chick pea (Cicer arietinum) is an annual legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae, cultivated for its edible seeds. Its different types are variously known as gram or Bengal gram; chhola, chhana, chana, or channa; garbanzo or garbanzo bean; or Egyptian pea. It is one of the earliest cultivated legumes, the oldest archaeological evidence of which was found in Syria.
Chickpeas are high in protein. The chickpea is a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, used in hummus, and, when soaked and coarsely ground with herbs and spices then made into patties and fried, falafel. As an important part of Indian cuisine, it is used in salads, soups and stews, and curry, in chana masala, and in other food products that contain channa (chickpeas). In 2022, India accounted for 75% of global chickpea production.
Chickpeas have been cultivated for at least ten thousand years. Cultivation spread from the Fertile Crescent eastward toward South Asia and into Europe through the Balkans. Historical linguistics have found ancestral words relating to chickpeas in the prehistoric Proto-Indo-European language family that evolved into the Indo-European languages. The Proto-Indo-European roots *kek- and *k'ik'- that denoted both 'pea' and 'oat' appeared in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe between 4,500 and 2,500 BCE. As speakers of the language became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects diverged due to contact with other languages and dialects, and transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. The Old Prussian word kekêrs, appearing between 1 and 100 CE, retained the 'pea' meaning of the word, but in most cases, the word came to be used to denote chickpeas. In Old Macedonian, the word κίκερροι appeared between 1000 and 400 BCE, and may have evolved from the Proto-Hellenic word *κικριός. In Ancient Rome, the Latin word cicer for chickpeas appeared around 700 BCE, and is probably derived from the word kickere used by the Pelasgians that inhabited north Greece before Greek-speaking tribes took over. The Old Armenian word siseŕn for chickpeas appeared before 400 CE. Over time, linkages between languages led to other descendant words, including the Albanian word qiqër, the Swedish word kikärt, the Slovak word cícer, the Estonian word kikerhernes, the Basque word txitxirio, and the Maltese word cicra.
The Latin word cicer evolved into words for chickpeas in nearly all extinct and living Romance languages, including the Mozarabic word chíchar; the Catalan words ceirons, cigró, cigronera, cigrons and ciurons; the Walloon words poes d' souke; the Old French words ceire and cice; and the Modern French terms cicérole, cicer tete-de-belier, and pois chiche. These words were borrowed by many geographically neighboring languages, such as the French term pois chiche becoming chich-pease in Old English. The word pease, like the modern words for wheat and corn, was both singular and plural, but since it had an "s" sound at the end of it which became associated with the plural form of nouns, English speakers by the end of the 17th century were starting to refer to a single grain of pease as a pea.
Other important Proto-Indo-European roots relating to chickpeas are *erəgw[h]-, eregw(h)o-, and erogw(h)o-, which were used to denote both the kernel of a legume and a pea. This root evolved into the Greek word erebinthos, mentioned in The Iliad in around 800 BCE and in Historia Plantarum by Theophrastus, written between 350 and 287 BCE. The Portuguese words ervanço and gravanço; the Asturian word garbanzu; the Galician word garavanzo; the French words garvanche, garvance, and garvane; and the Spanish word garbanzo are all related to the Greek term. In American English, the term garbanzo to refer to the chickpea appeared in writing as early as 1759, and the seed is also referred to as a garbanzo bean.
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is a member of the genus Cicer and the legume family, Fabaceae. Carl Linnaeus described it in the first edition of Species Plantarum in 1753, marking the first use of binomial nomenclature for the plant. Linnaeus classified the plant in the genus Cicer, which was the Latin term for chickpeas, crediting Joseph Pitton de Tournefort's 1694 publication Elemens de botanique, ou Methode pour connoitre les plantes which called it "Cicer arietinum". Tournefort himself repeated the names of the plant that had been used since antiquity.
The specific epithet arietinum is based on the shape of the seed resembling the head of a ram. In Ancient Greece, Theophrastus described one of the varieties of chickpea called "rams" in Historia Plantarum. The Roman writer on agriculture Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella wrote about chickpeas in the second book of De re rustica, published in about 64 CE, and said that the chickpea was called arietillum. Pliny the Elder expanded further in Naturalis Historia that this name was due to the seed's resemblance to the head of a ram.
Cicer arietinum is the type species of the genus. The wild species C. reticulatum is interfertile with C. arietinum and is considered to be the progenitor of the cultivated species. C. echinospermum is also closely related and can be hybridized with both C. reticulatum and C. arietinum, but generally produce infertile seeds.
The chickpea was originally domesticated along with wheat, barley, peas, and lentils during the First Agricultural Revolution about 10,000 years ago. The closest evolutionary relative to chickpeas is Cicer reticulatum, a plant native to a relatively small area in the Southeastern part of modern-day Turkey and nearby areas in modern-day Syria. Initially, ancient hunter-gatherer cultures harvested wild plants that they encountered, but evidence of the cultivation of some domestic food crops from 7500 BCE and possibly earlier have been documented.
Archaeological sites in modern Syria, such as Tell El-Kerkh and Tell Abu Hureyra, have revealed remnant traces of peas, lentils, and fava beans, along with grain legumes including chickpeas, bitter vetch, and grass peas from the 8th millenium BCE. Samples from Tell El-Kerkh have been analyzed, revealing traces of both the cultivated C. arietinum and the wild C. reticulatum. Additional discoveries have been made at Çayönü in Turkey dating from between 7500 and 6800 BCE, and at Hacilar in Turkey that date from 5450 BCE.
Cultivation of domesticated chickpea is well documented from 3300 BCE onwards in Egypt and the Middle East. During the Neolithic Era, chickpea cultivation spread to the west and was established in present-day Greece by the late Neolithic Era. During the Bronze Age, chickpea cultivation spread to Crete and as far as upper Egypt, with specimens from 1400 BCE found at Deir el-Medina. At the same time, it spread to the east, and chickpeas from 1900 BCE were found at Tell Bazmusian. In the Indian subcontinent, archaeological evidence of chickpea cultivation at Lal Quila, Sanghol, Inamgaon, Nevasa, Hulas, Senuwar, and Daimabad date from between 1750 and 1500 BCE. By the Iron Age, cultivation had spread as far south as Lalibela in Ethiopia. The Spanish and Portuguese introduced chickpea cultivation to the New World in the 16th century.
The process of domestication involved the selective breeding of plants that produced large, palatable seeds that do not require a dormancy period, plants that have seeds that are easy to separate from the pods, plants with a predictable ripening period to allow a whole field to ripen at once, and plants with desirable physical forms. This selective breeding produced several different varieties of chickpeas. In Greece, Theophrastus wrote "Chickpeas ... differ in size, color, taste, and shape; there are the varieties called 'rams' and 'vetch-like' chickpeas, and the intermediate forms" in Historia Plantarum, written between 350 and 287 BCE.
One key selection factor in the domestication of chickpeas was the selection of a spring-sown cropping season. The evolutionary relatives of Cicer arietinum grow during the Winter and are harvested in the Spring. In the Near East, more than 80 percent of annual precipitation occurs between the months of December and February, while the long summers are hot and dry. Growing in the damp Winter months made the crops vulnerable to Ascochyta blight caused by Didymella rabiei, resulting in crop failures. Recorded evidence shows that by the Hellenistic period and the time of the Roman Empire, summer cropping of chickpeas was being practiced.
Sequencing of the genome of the chickpea has been completed for 90 chickpea genotypes, including several wild species. A collaboration of 20 research organizations, led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), sequenced CDC Frontier, a kabuli chickpea variety, and identified more than 28,000 genes and several million genetic markers.
The plant grows to 20–50 cm (8–20 in) high and has small, feathery leaves on either side of the stem. Chickpeas are a type of pulse, with one seedpod containing two or three peas. It has white flowers with blue, violet, or pink veins.
The most common variety of chickpea in South Asia, Ethiopia, Mexico, and Iran is the desi type, also called Bengal gram. It has small, dark seeds and a rough coat. It can be black, green or speckled. In Hindi, it is called desi chana 'native chickpea' or kala chana 'black chickpea', and in Assamese and Bengali, it is called boot or chholaa boot. It can be hulled and split to make chana dal, Kurukshetra Prasadam (channa laddu), and bootor daali.
Around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, the most common variety of chickpea is the kabuli type. It is large and tan-colored, with a smooth coat. It was introduced to India in the 18th century from Afghanistan and is called kabuli chana in Hindi.
An uncommon black chickpea, ceci neri, is grown only in Apulia and Basilicata, in southern Italy. It is around the same size as garbanzo beans, larger and darker than the 'desi' variety.
Chickpeas are usually rapidly boiled for 10 minutes and then simmered for longer. Dried chickpeas need a long cooking time (1–2 hours) but will easily fall apart when cooked longer. If soaked for 12–24 hours before use, cooking time can be shortened by around 30 minutes. Chickpeas can also be pressure cooked or sous vide cooked at 90 °C (194 °F).
Mature chickpeas can be cooked and eaten cold in salads, cooked in stews, ground into flour, ground and shaped in balls and fried as falafel, made into a batter and baked to make farinata or socca, or fried to make panelle. Chickpea flour is known as gram flour or besan in South Asia and is used frequently in South Asian cuisine.
In Portugal, chickpeas are one of the main ingredients in rancho, eaten with pasta, meat, or rice. They are used in other hot dishes with bacalhau and in soups, meat stews, salads mixed with tuna and vegetables, olive oil, vinegar, hot pepper and salt. In Spain, they are used cold in tapas and salads, as well as in cocido madrileño.
Hummus is the Arabic word for chickpeas, which are often cooked and ground into a paste and mixed with tahini (sesame seed paste) to make ḥummuṣ bi ṭaḥīna, usually called simply hummus in English. By the end of the 20th century, hummus had become common in American cuisine: by 2010, 5% of Americans consumed it regularly, and it was present at some point in 17% of American households.
In the Middle East, chickpeas are also roasted, spiced, and eaten as a snack, such as leblebi.
Chickpeas and Bengal grams are used to make curries. They are one of the most popular vegetarian foods in the Indian subcontinent and in diaspora communities of many other countries, served with a variety of bread or steamed rice. Popular dishes in Indian cuisine are made with chickpea flour, such as mirchi bajji and mirapakaya bajji. In India, as well as in the Levant, unripe chickpeas are often picked out of the pod and eaten as a raw snack, and the leaves are eaten as a leaf vegetable in salads. In India, desserts such as besan halwa and sweets such as mysore pak, and laddu are made.
Chickpea flour is used to make "Burmese tofu", which was first known among the Shan people of Burma. In South Asian cuisine, chickpea flour (besan) is used as a batter to coat vegetables before deep frying to make pakoras. The flour is also used as a batter to coat vegetables and meats before frying or fried alone, such as panelle (little bread), a chickpea fritter from Sicily. Chickpea flour is used to make the Mediterranean flatbread socca and is called panisse in Provence, southern France. It is made of cooked chickpea flour, poured into saucers, allowed to set, cut into strips, and fried in olive oil, often eaten during Lent. In Tuscany, chickpea flour (farina di ceci) is used to make an oven-baked pancake: the flour is mixed with water, oil and salt. Chickpea flour, known as kadlehittu in Kannada, is used for making sweet dish Mysore pak.
In the Philippines, chickpeas preserved in syrup are eaten as sweets and in desserts such as halo-halo.
Ashkenazi Jews traditionally serve whole chickpeas, referred to as arbes (אַרבעס) in Yiddish, at the Shalom Zachar celebration for baby boys. The chickpeas are boiled until soft and served hot with salt and lots of ground black pepper.
Guasanas or garbanza is a Mexican chickpea street snack. The beans, while still green, are cooked in water and salt, kept in a steamer to maintain their humidity, and served in a plastic bag.
A chickpea-derived liquid (aquafaba) can be used as an egg white replacement to make meringue or ice cream, with the residual pomace used as flour.
In 1793, ground, roasted chickpeas were noted by a German writer as a substitute for coffee in Europe. In the First World War, they were grown for this use in some areas of Germany. They are still sometimes brewed instead of coffee.
Chickpeas are an energy and protein source as animal feed.
Raw chickpeas have a lower trypsin and chymotrypsin inhibitor content than peas, common beans, and soybeans. This leads to higher nutrition values and fewer digestive problems in nonruminants. Nonruminant diets can be completed with 200 g/kg of raw chickpeas to promote egg production and growth of birds and pigs. Higher amounts can be used when chickpeas are treated with heat.
Experiments have shown that ruminants grow equally well and produce an equal amount and quality of milk when soybean or cereal meals are replaced with chickpeas. Pigs show the same performance, but growing pigs experience a negative effect of raw chickpea feed; extruded chickpeas can increase performance even in growing pigs. Only young broilers (starting period) showed worse performance in poultry diet experiments with untreated chickpeas. Fish performed equally well when extruded chickpeas replaced their soybean or cereal diet. Chickpea seeds have also been used in rabbit diets.
Secondary components of legumes—such as lecithin, polyphenols, oligosaccharides; and amylase, protease, trypsin and chymotrypsin inhibitors—can lead to lower nutrient availability, and thus to impaired growth and health of animals (especially in nonruminants). Ruminants generally have less trouble digesting legumes with secondary components since they can inactivate them in the rumen liquor. Their diets can be supplemented by 300 g/kg or more raw chickpea seeds. However, protein digestibility and energy availability can be improved through treatments such as germination, dehulling, and heat. Extrusion is a very good heat technique to destroy secondary legume components since the proteins are irreversibly denatured. Overprocessing may decrease the nutritional value; extrusion leads to losses in minerals and vitamins, while dry heating does not change the chemical composition.
Ancient people also associated chickpeas with Venus because they were said to offer medical uses such as increasing semen and milk production, inducing menstruation and urination, and helping to treat kidney stones. "White cicers" were thought to be especially strong and helpful. The 17th-century botanist Nicholas Culpeper noted "chick-pease or cicers" are less "windy" than peas and more nourishing.
In 2022, world production of chickpeas was 18 million tonnes, led by India with 75% of the global total (table).
Chickpeas are a nutrient-dense food, providing rich content (20% or higher of the Daily Value, DV) of protein, dietary fiber, folate, and certain dietary minerals, such as iron and phosphorus in a 100-gram reference amount (see adjacent nutrition table). Thiamin, vitamin B6, magnesium, and zinc contents are moderate, providing 10–16% of the DV. Compared to reference levels established by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization, proteins in cooked and germinated chickpeas are rich in essential amino acids such as lysine, isoleucine, tryptophan, and total aromatic amino acids.
A 100-gram (3+1⁄2-ounce) reference serving of cooked chickpeas provides 686 kilojoules (164 kilocalories) of food energy. Cooked chickpeas are 60% water, 27% carbohydrates, 9% protein and 3% fat (table). Seventy-five percent of the fat content is unsaturated fatty acids for which linoleic acid comprises 43% of the total fat.
Cooking treatments do not lead to variance in total protein and carbohydrate content. Soaking and cooking of dry seeds possibly induces chemical modification of protein-fibre complexes, which leads to an increase in crude fibre content. Thus, cooking can increase protein quality by inactivating or destroying heat-labile antinutritional factors. Cooking also increases protein digestibility, essential amino acid index, and protein efficiency ratio. Although cooking lowers concentrations of amino acids such as tryptophan, lysine, total aromatic, and sulphur-containing amino acids, their contents are still higher than proposed by the FAO/WHO reference. Raffinose and sucrose and other reducing sugars diffuse from the chickpea into the cooking water and this reduces or completely removes these components from the chickpea. Cooking also significantly reduces fat and mineral content. The B vitamins riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, and pyridoxine dissolve into cooking water at differing rates.
Germination of chickpeas improves protein digestibility, although at a lower level than cooking. Germination degrades proteins to simple peptides, improving crude protein, nonprotein nitrogen, and crude fibre content. Germination decreases lysine, tryptophan, sulphur and total aromatic amino acids, but most contents are still higher than proposed by the FAO/WHO reference pattern.
Oligosaccharides, such as stachyose and raffinose, are reduced in higher amounts during germination than during cooking. Minerals and B vitamins are retained more effectively during germination than with cooking. Phytic acids are reduced significantly, but trypsin inhibitor, tannin, and saponin reduction is less effective than cooking.
In a 2002 study comparing germination and cooking effects on chickpea nutritional values, all treatments of cooking (autoclaving, microwave cooking, boiling) were found to improve protein digestibility. Essential amino acids were slightly increased by boiling and microwave cooking compared to autoclaving and germination. losses in B-vitamins and minerals in chickpeas cooked by microwaving were smaller than in those cooked by boiling and autoclaving.
Chickpeas contain oligosaccharides (raffinose, stachyose, and verbascose) which are indigestible to humans but are fermented in the gut by bacteria, leading to flatulence in susceptible individuals. This can be prevented by skinning the husks from the chickpeas before serving.
In some parts of the world, young chickpea leaves are consumed as cooked green vegetables. Especially in malnourished populations, it can supplement important dietary nutrients because regions where chickpeas are consumed have sometimes been found to have populations lacking micronutrients. Chickpea leaves have a significantly higher mineral content than either cabbage leaves or spinach leaves. Environmental factors and nutrient availability could influence mineral concentrations in natural settings. Consumption of chickpea leaves may contribute nutrients to the diet.
The consumption of chickpeas is under preliminary research for the potential to improve nutrition and affect chronic diseases.
Agricultural yield for chickpeas is often based on genetic and phenotypic variability, which has recently been influenced by artificial selection. The uptake of macronutrients such as inorganic phosphorus or nitrogen is vital to the plant development of Cicer arietinum, commonly known as the perennial chickpea. Heat cultivation and macronutrient coupling are two relatively unknown methods used to increase the yield and size of the chickpea. Recent research has indicated that a combination of heat treatment along with the two vital macronutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen, are the most critical components to increasing the overall yield of Cicer arietinum.
Perennial chickpeas are a fundamental source of nutrition in animal feed as they are high-energy and protein sources for livestock. Unlike other food crops, the perennial chickpea can change its nutritional content in response to heat cultivation. Treating the chickpea with a constant heat source increases its protein content almost threefold. Consequently, the impact of heat cultivation affects the protein content of the chickpea itself and the ecosystem it supports. Increasing the height and size of chickpea plants involves using macronutrient fertilization with varying doses of inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen.
The level of phosphorus that a chickpea seed is exposed to during its lifecycle has a positive correlation relative to the height of the plant at full maturity. Increasing the levels of inorganic phosphorus at all doses incrementally increases the height of the chickpea plant. Thus, the seasonal changes in phosphorus soil content, as well as periods of drought that are known to be a native characteristic of the dry Middle-Eastern region where the chickpea is most commonly cultivated, have a strong effect on the growth of the plant itself. Plant yield is also affected by a combination of phosphorus nutrition and water supply, resulting in a 12% increase in crop yield.
Nitrogen nutrition is another factor that affects the yield of Cicer arietinum, although the application differs from other perennial crops regarding the levels administered on the plant. High doses of nitrogen inhibit the yield of the chickpea plant. Drought stress is a likely factor that inhibits nitrogen uptake and subsequent fixation in the roots of Cicer arietinum. The perennial chickpea's growth depends on the balance between nitrogen fixation and assimilation, which is also characteristic of many other agricultural plant types. The influence of drought stress, sowing date, and mineral nitrogen supply affect the plant's yield and size, with trials showing that Cicer arietinum differed from other plant species in its capacity to assimilate mineral nitrogen supply from the soil during drought stress. Additional minerals and micronutrients make the absorption process of nitrogen and phosphorus more available. Inorganic phosphate ions are generally attracted towards charged minerals such as iron and aluminium oxides.
Additionally, growth and yield are also limited by the micronutrients zinc and boron deficiencies in the soil. Boron-rich soil increased chickpea yield and size, while soil fertilization with zinc seemed to have no apparent effect on the chickpea yield.
Pathogens in chickpeas are the main cause of yield loss (up to 90%). One example is the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris, present in most of the major pulse crop-growing areas and causing regular yield damages between 10 and 15%. Many plant hosts produce heat shock protein 70s including C. arietinum. In response to F. o. ciceris Gupta et al., 2017 finds C. arietinum produces an orthologue of AtHSP70-1, an Arabidopsis HSP70.
From 1978 until 1995, the worldwide number of pathogens increased from 49 to 172, of which 35 were recorded in India. These pathogens originate from groups of bacteria, fungi, viruses, mycoplasma and nematodes and show a high genotypic variation. The most widely distributed pathogens are Ascochyta rabiei (35 countries), Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris (32 countries) Uromyces ciceris-arietini (25 countries), bean leafroll virus (23 countries), and Macrophomina phaseolina (21 countries). Ascochyta disease emergence is favoured by wet weather; spores are carried to new plants by wind and water splash.
The stagnation of yield improvement over the last decades is linked to the susceptibility to pathogens. Research for yield improvement, such as an attempt to increase yield from 0.8 to 2.0 metric tons per hectare (0.32 to 0.80 long ton/acre; 0.36 to 0.89 short ton/acre) by breeding cold-resistant varieties, is always linked with pathogen-resistance breeding as pathogens such as Ascochyta rabiei and F. o. f.sp. ciceris flourish in conditions such as cold temperature. Research started selecting favourable genes for pathogen resistance and other traits through marker-assisted selection. This method is a promising sign for the future to achieve significant yield improvements.