Abstract

Chickpea is a cool season, drought hardy grain legume crop that is grown in Asia, East Africa, United States of America and Europe. The crop has the potential to close the winter legume gap because it can adapt to cool season temperatures as compared to summer legumes grown in Zimbabwe. The aim of this paper is to unpack various opportunities for promoting chickpea in drought prone areas of Zimbabwe which might be relevant to other Southern African countries and to understand the major chickpea production requirements in order to merge with the prevailing environmental conditions in Zimbabwe. The crop is affected by abiotic factors and biotic factors; hence chickpea cultivars that could tolerate these factors should be bred and adopted. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), in cooperation with the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in developing countries could help distribute chickpea germplasm to Zimbabwe for research and breeding work since they collectively maintain the world’s largest international collections of plant genetic resources for use by researchers and farmers. Overall chickpea has great potential to enhance protein availability in drought prone areas of Zimbabwe especially during the winter season where no other legume is grown.

Key words: Cicer arietinum, Desi, Kabuli.