Unveiling the Potentials of Chickpea in Zimbabwe- A Review
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Biophysical constraints such assoil infertility and erratic rainfall patterns negatively impact crop production and productivity and threaten to further worsen food and nutrition insecurity and environmental vulnerability. Therefore, the integration of legumes for diversification of cropping systems, currently dominated by maize mono-crops, has the potential to increase resilience. Traditional legume options for diversification, which include groundnut and common bean, have limited resilience against climate change variability. Hence, a need to introduce other new legume crops that are proving to be efficient in other countries like chickpeas. Chickpea is reported to thrive well in semi-arid conditions, with the capacity to reclaim degraded soils due to its nitrogen-fixing ability, and can help fight hidden hunger amongst the poor-resourced communities who sorely depend on agriculture production for sustainable livelihoods. Therefore, a review was carried out to unveil the hidden potentials and opportunities for the adoption and utilization of the crop in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce malnutrition and improve soil fertility which in both terms sustains food and nutrition security of smallholder farmers in semi-arid regions where production of cereal crops like maize is now a challenge.
Authors: Charachimwe, Reason R., Nhamo, Nhamo, Pepukai, Manjeru
Institutions: Zimbabwe Open University, Midlands State University
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W6930624848
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