Several summers ago, me and my mother were on a trip and found ourselves in dire need of a snack. After stopping at a local grocery store my mother showed me what she picked out, a bag of carrots and a container of something called hummus. Immediately suspicious of this brown mushy looking substance, I hesitantly tried some and found it absolutely delicious! After deciding to investigate what exactly this delicious substance was, I found that it consisted mostly of chickpeas, a plant product I knew little about. The scientific name of the Chickpea is Cicer arietinum (1). It is a legume belonging to the family Fabaceae and is also known by many names such as garbanzo beans, ceci beans, sanagalu, and Bengal gram (1) .The chickpea is said to have …show more content…
The primary root is a long taproot and grows several lateral roots (2). The root systems have nitrogen-fixing bacteria living on them converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form that can be used by plants (4). As chickpea plants help increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil they are considered to be soil enriching rather than soil depleting plants. Because of this chickpea plants could be turned over into the soil to act as a kind of “green manure” rather than being harvested. The branched stems produce both leaves and flowers, with pinnately compound leaves with leaflets usually in pairs of 5-7. The flowers that are produced are white, lilac, or purple and produce flowers 40 to 80 days depending on the variety of chickpea, its location, environmental factors, and soil conditions.(4) The plant’s growth is indeterminate; it continues even after it flowers. Chickpea seeds are spherical with variation in color (4). There are two separate cultivations of chickpeas that produce different seed types; one a dark brown and smaller-seeded type called desi, and a whitish larger-seeded type called kabuli (1). The kabuli chickpeas are more commonly seen in the U.S.. It is likely that the small-seeded chickpea originated first with selective breeding and mutations leading to a larger-seeded version (2). These seeds are often consumed as food due to their high …show more content…
The seeds are planted in spring, the specific month depending on what country and environment they are grown in (5). They thrive in sunny environments relatively cool in temperature with soil that is well-drained. Seedlings usually emerge between 7 to 15 days after planting depending on the temperature of the environment (6). Plans should be watered more than usual during dry periods as drought can reduce its productivity (7). Fertilizers are not considered necessary due to the nitrogen producing properties that the chickpea plant has. Chickpea plants can be susceptible to many diseases; worldwide the most important is ascochyta blight (4). Appearing first as water-soaked pale spots on leaves this disease can cause stem death, infected seeds, and in extreme cases can cause the entire plant to dry up suddenly (8). To increase the resistance of this plant fungicide should be sprayed on the plants 4-6 weeks after sowing and sprayed ever 2-3 weeks (8). There are also more resistant varieties that can largely resist the disease (8). It takes approximately 100 days for a chickpea plant to mature and for its seeds to be ready to harvest (6). If a drier chickpea is desired the leaves should be allowed to turn brown before collecting the pods. Each pod is inflated in shape and the number of pods per plant varies from very few to over 1000