Chickpea

Sequencing of the chickpea genome has been completed for 90 chickpea genotypes, including several wild species.[16] 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.[17]

Chana Dal, split Bengal gram

Hummus with olive oil

Dhokla, steamed chickpea flour snack

Chickpeas are usually rapidly boiled for 10 minutes and then simmered for a longer period. 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 cecina, or fried to make panelle. Chickpea flour is known as gram flour or besan in South Asia and used frequently in South Asian cuisine.

In Portugal, chickpeas are one of the main ingredients in rancho, eaten with pasta and meat or with rice. They are used in other hot dishes with bacalhau and in soups, meat stews, and 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), the blend called ḥummuṣ bi ṭaḥīna. Chickpeas are roasted, spiced, and eaten as a snack, such as leblebi. By the end of the 20th century, hummus had become commonplace in American cuisine.[21] By 2010, 5% of Americans consumed hummus on a regular basis,[21] and it was present in 17% of American households.[22]

Chickpeas and Bengal grams are used to make curries and are one of the most popular vegetarian foods in the Indian subcontinent and in diaspora communities of many other countries served with variety of breads 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, besan barfi 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 the 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 called panisse in Provence, southern France. It is made of cooked chickpea flour, poured into saucers, allowed to set, cut in 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 Mysorepak.

In the Philippines, chickpeas preserved in syrup are eaten as sweets and in desserts such as halo-halo. Jews from Ashkenazi countries traditionally serve whole chickpeas at a Shalom Zachar celebration for baby boys.

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[23] or ice cream, with the residual pomace used as flour.[24]

• 
  Doubles, a street food in Trinidad and Tobago
• 
  Manchego cuisine; chickpea and Silene vulgaris stew (potaje de garbanzos y collejas)
• 
  Farinata di ceci, a traditional Italian chickpea snack food
• 
  Chakhchoukha in Algerian cuisine; freshly cooked marqa before mixing with rougag
• 
  Chana masala, India
• 
  Halua chickpeas, Bangladesh
• 
  Fried chickpea

Chickpeas serve as an energy and protein source as animal feed.[25]

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.[25]

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. In poultry diet experiments with untreated chickpeas, only young broilers (starting period) showed worse performance. Fish performed equally well when their soybean or cereal diet was replaced by extruded chickpeas.[25] Chickpea seeds have also been used in rabbit diets.[19]

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 have generally 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.[25] 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 components in legumes, 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.[25]

Cooking treatments do not lead to variance in total protein and carbohydrate content.[28][29] Soaking and cooking of dry seeds possibly induces chemical modification of protein-fibre complexes, which leads to an increase in crude fiber content. Thus, cooking can increase protein quality by inactivating or destroying heat-labile antinutritional factors.[28] 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.[28] Diffusion of reducing sugars, raffinose, sucrose and others into cooking water reduces or completely removes these components. Cooking also significantly reduces fat and mineral contents. The B vitamins riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, and pyridoxine dissolve into cooking water at differing rates.[28]

Germination of chickpeas improves protein digestibility, although at a lower level than cooking. Germination degrades proteins to simple peptides, so improves crude protein, nonprotein nitrogen, and crude fiber 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.[28]

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.[28]

Protein digestibility is improved by all treatments of cooking. Essential amino acids are slightly increased by boiling and microwave cooking when compared to autoclaving and germination. Overall, microwave cooking leads to a significantly lower loss of nutrients compared to autoclaving and boiling.

Finally, all treatments lead to an improved protein digestibility, protein efficiency ratio, and essential amino acid index. Microwave cooking seems to be an effective method to prepare chickpeas because of its improvement of nutritional values and its lower cooking time.[28]

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 been sometimes found to have populations lacking micronutrients.[30] Chickpea leaves have a significantly higher mineral content than either cabbage leaves or spinach leaves.[30] In natural settings, environmental factors and nutrient availability could influence mineral concentrations. Consumption of chickpea leaves may contribute nutrients to the diet.[30]

Agricultural yield for chickpea is often based on genetic and phenotypic variability which has recently been influenced by artificial selection.[31] The uptake of micronutrients such as inorganic phosphorus or nitrogen is vital to the plant development of Cicer arietinum, commonly known as the perennial chickpea.[32] Heat cultivation and micronutrient coupling are two relatively unknown methods that are 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 micronutrients, phosphorus and nitrogen, are the most critical components to increasing the overall yield of Cicer arietinum.[32]

Perennial chickpeas are a fundamental source of nutrition in animal feed as they are high sources of energy and protein for livestock. Unlike other food crops, the perennial chickpea shows a remarkable capacity to change its nutritional content in response to heat cultivation. Treating the chickpea with a constant heat source increases its protein content almost threefold.[32] Consequently, the impact of heat cultivation not only affects the protein content of the chickpea itself, but the ecosystem that it supports as well. Increasing the height and size of chickpea plants involves using micronutrient fertilization with varying doses of inorganic phosphorus and nitrogen.[33]

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.[33] 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 yield of the crop.[33]

Nitrogen nutrition is another factor that affects the yield of Cicer arietinum, although the application itself differs from other perennial crops with regards to the levels administered on the plant. High doses of nitrogen inhibit the yield of the chickpea plant.[34] Drought stress is a likely factor that also inhibits the uptake of nitrogen and subsequent fixation in the roots of Cicer arietinum. The growth of the perennial chickpea is dependent on the balance between nitrogen fixation and assimilation that is also characteristic of many other agricultural plant types. The influence of drought stress, sowing date, and mineral nitrogen supply all have an effect on the yield and size of the plant, with trials showing that Cicer arietinum differed from other plant species in its capacity to assimilate mineral nitrogen supply from soil during drought stress.[34] 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.[35]

Additionally, growth and yield are also limited by zinc and boron deficiencies in the soil. Boron-rich soil resulted in an increase of chickpea yield and size, while soil fertilization with zinc seemed to have no apparent effect on the chickpea yield.[36]