Characterization of chickpea cultivars and trait specific germplasm for grain protein content and amino acids composition and identification of potential donors for genetic improvement of its nutritional quality

Ever increasing global population necessitates the need to increase availability of affordable foods with high nutritional quality. Chickpea being the second most important grain legume cultivated worldwide has the great potential to alleviate problems of protein malnutrition and hidden hunger. The objective of the present investigation was to characterize a diverse set of 402 germplasm comprising of more than 100 commercial cultivars widely cultivated and utilized by breeders for grain protein in two contrasting environments to explore the magnitude of natural genotypic diversity present in the cultivated chickpea and the scope for enhancing it and its quality through breeding. The cultivars containing more than 25 to 30.44% grain protein have been found in the study and large scale production of such protein rich cultivars is expected to increase availability as well as consumption of high quality chickpea necessary to overcome all forms of malnutrition. Trait specific germplasm containing grain protein up to 33.56% are also identified for their further utilization as potential donors in the chickpea improvement programme. The amino acid profiling of selected high and low protein containing genotypes showed considerably greater average amino acid score for all the essential amino acids than the WHO recommended requirement values and is comparable to those of the ‘complete protein’ sources of food suggesting that chickpea deserves to be considered as a ‘complete protein’ source.