Chickpea

Sowing: Chickpea is a hardy annual sown in spring, thriving in full sun and tolerating chalk, clay, loam, or sandy soils.

Growing: The plant carries small, feathery leaves and sweet pea-like flowers in shades of pink, white, or purple through summer, followed by fat green pods that each hold two or three seeds.

Pods are usually ready for picking around 100 days after sowing. Once mature, the seeds are commonly dried for long-term storage or sold canned, though fresh green pods are occasionally picked and sold whole at farmers' markets.

Culinary: Chickpeas are a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking, ground into hummus or combined with herbs and spices to make falafel, and they feature widely in Indian cuisine in salads, soups, stews, and curries.

Nutritional: The seed is a source of protein, folate, fiber, iron, and phosphorus, along with unsaturated fatty acids such as linoleic and oleic acid.

Chickpea is among the earliest cultivated legumes, with the oldest archaeological evidence found in Syria, and it is thought to have emerged in the Fertile Crescent region spanning modern Syria, Turkey, and Iran. From there it spread into subtropical, tropical, and temperate growing regions including the Mediterranean, north-eastern Africa, and western and central Asia, and it is now cultivated in more than fifty countries, with India producing the most today.