Variation in important seed constituents among various chickpea genotypes

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the third most important pulse crop and an excellent source of protein in the human diet (Garg et al., 2011). However, the presence of anti-nutritional factors like the raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) restrains its acceptability as food and feed (Olmedilla Alonso et al., 2010). Higher concentration of RFO in chickpea seeds affects human health negatively and plays an important physiological role in plants (MartinezVillaluenga et al., 2008). Hence, there is a need to reduce RFO concentration in seeds without affecting plant growth. To achieve this objective, it is imperative to understand the biochemical mechanism and genetic basis of the RFO biosynthetic pathway. As a first step, we studied the variation in RFO concentration along with starch and protein in a germplasm collection of 152 genotypes.