Chickpeas Have Brighter Future

Chickpeas, high in protein, fiber and other nutrients, are important legume crops the world over. But the crop suffers from the larval stage of the beet armyworm moth which likes to eat the crop's leaves. New lines of resistant chickpeas called “CRIL-7” have been developed by Agricultural Research Service scientists and their collaborators. Thid development could put the kibosh on this crop-damaging pest's voracious appetite, and potentially save on chemical insecticides used to fight it.

The "CRIL-7" chickpeas were conventionally bred from a cross between wild and cultivated species by a team of scientists from the ARS Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research Station in Pullman, Washington; Washington State University's Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture; and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India. In 2005, India led the world in chickpea production with 6.6 billion tons

in 2006-07 greenhouse trials, 28 to 62 percent of beet armyworms that fed on the leaves of resistant chickpeas died within a few days of hatching from eggs. The surviving worms were smaller and shorter than usual. The CRIL-7s outperformed commercial cultivars used for comparison of resistance, but still require agronomic testing under field conditions as the next step towards commercialization.