The ancient wisdom of the Indians about the value
of pulses in human nutrition is perhaps, responsible to a extent
for the wide spread vegetarianism in our country.
The staple pulse component in combination with
cereals in our diet (for example,dalroti and and dal-chawal) eminates
from this recognition, Modern nutritionists also substantiates that
this combination is superior to either pulse or cereal alone.
Our ancestors were also wise to the value of pulse crops
in maintaining and improving the soil fertility, not only by raising
legumes for grain but also for green manuring.
During the last few decades, there has been a spurt
in consumption of fertilisers as a result of which, pulse production
has been pushed aside. However, it is now considered for too costly
to apply desired levels of factory-produced fertilisers to non-leguminous
crops.
In times to come, there will naturally be a greater dependence
on nitrogen fixed by legumes because of the declining availability of
petrolium by-products which constitute the raw materials for artificial
fertilisers.
More and more countries especially in semi-arid tropics
are now showing growing awareness of the inevitability of resorting
to exploitative farming practices based on legume-non-legume companion
cropping or sequential cropping.
Data reveal that as much as 20 to 60kg N per hectare
may be left by these legumes for the subsequent crop, besides meeting
their own requirements.
We, in this country, are fortunate in having some of
these systems already under practice but they need to be standardised
and further improved.
Chickpea is generally grown on conserved moisture during
the dry season of the year. Throught most of the Indian sub continent,
desi types are grown as an autumn sown winter crop.
As a result of this reliance on conserved moisture, production
is erratic. Low mangement inputs such as fertilization, pest control
and weed control, are the general rule.
Local Names
Hindi - Chana
Assamee - Butmah
Bengali - Chola
Oriya - Bool
Telugu - Sanagalu
Tamil - Kadalai
Malayalam - Kadalai
Kannada - Kadale
Marathi - Harbara
Gujrati - Chana
Gram is the most important pulse crops grown in India,
ranking fourth among the grain crops in acreage and production.
It occupies over 10 million hectares yielding about 5.4
lakh tons of grain annually in India.
The main producing areas are the upper basins of the
Ganges, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the adjoining tracts of
Central India, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Gram is not an important pulse crop in South India. Total
area of gram in South India is 2 lakhs hectares with a production of
94 thousand tons and thus the average yield is very low.
Chanaka (Cicer arietinum L.) in the Sanskrit literature shows
that the cultivation of this pulse has been in vogue in India since
very ancient times.
According to Vavilov (1951) and his colleagues, India and the Middle
East form the primary centre of origin of most of the important legumes.
He included Cicer in the following centres of origin of the cultivated
plants
(i) The Indian or more exactly the Hindustan centre of origin of
the cultivated plants, which includes Burma and Assam and excludes
North west India-Punjab and the North- West Frontier provinces,
(ii) The Central Asiatic Centre, including North-West India (Punjab,
North-West Frontier Provinces, Kashmir), Afghanistan, the Soviet Republics
of Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan and western Tian-Shan,
(iii) the Near-Eastern centre of origin including Asia Minor and
Transcausaia,
(iv) the Mediterranian centre of origin and
(v) the Abyssinian centre of origin, comprising Abyssinia, somaliland,
Ethiopia (including the Hill country of Eritera).
Only a few beans, such as the French, the lima and the broad have
been introduced into India from tropical America.
In general, India is rich in the species, varieties and forms of pulses.
Papov(1929) regarded Cicer as a comparatively young and incompletely
differentiated group in which the process of individualization type,
both geographical and morphological, still continued and that due to
geographical isolation, races of one species might differ more sharply
among themselves than from the neighbouring closely related species.
The European (Kabuli) and the desi forms of grams may be viewed as
individualized races of Cicer arietinum L established as a result
of such severe geographical isolation.
The chick-pea is extensively cultivated as a winter crop thoughout
India, especially in the Northern States.
According to watt (1908), this is the Cicer of the Romans: parched
seed of Cicer fructnum as an article of food with the poor, has
been mentioned by Horace.
The specific name owes its origin to a not altogether fanciful resemblance
of the seed, when first forming in the pod, to a ram's head (the 'Krios'
of the Greeks).
History
