Nutritional Composition, Antinutritional Factors, and Utilization Trends of Ethiopian Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Chickpeas are a very important legume crop and have an abundant amount of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, fibers, and mineral contents. Most of the time, breeders were focused on the yield and the disease resistance criteria parameters for releasing new varieties, but not that much attention is given to the nutritional quality and quantity aspect. So the objective of this review mainly focuses on giving some hints for breeders and nutritionists on nutritional profiles and effects of traditional processing of different Ethiopian chickpea varieties which may be used for variety selection for the new variety trial and new product development, respectively. Chickpeas have many bioactive compounds, important vitamins, and minerals. Besides having nutritional benefits, the consumption of chickpeas always requires some processing as they have many antinutritional factors. Various traditional processes such as soaking, cooking or boiling, germination, roasting, fermentation, and dehulling have their own effects on the availability of nutrients. Chickpeas are used to make many Ethiopian traditional chickpea-based food products such as nifro, kollo, shiro, dabo, mitad shiro, ashuk, boklet, kita, genfo, injera, and shimbra-asa by using different processing methods. Chickpeas have several potential health beneficial effects on some of the important human diseases like cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, digestive diseases, and cancers. This review summarized that different Ethiopian chickpea varieties have significant differences in the nutritional composition profiles between different varieties grown in Ethiopia and are an excellent source of micronutrients and macronutrients.