The Hyberabad-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), which is the first institute to develop transgenic groundnut in the world, has taken up a project for developing transgenic chickpea. The project is funded under by the Indo-Swiss collaboration in biotechnology. The transgenic chickpea would be tolerant to drought and low temperature stresses by using genes with regulatory functions such as drought responsive elements and osmo- regulation. The global demand for chickpea, as per Icrisat's estimates, will be around 11.1 million tons (mt) by 2010 as against 8.2 mt in 2001-02, an increase of 35 percent. About 85 percent of the additional demand will come from India. A combination of yield and area expansion is the possible option in meeting the projected additional demand. At present, global productivity of chickpea at 0.8 ton per hectare is far below the potential of five tons per hectare.
