ICRISAT December 24, 2015

http://www.icrisat.org/planning-science-led-double-digit-growth-in-the-horticulture-sector/

Bringing together all actors in the chickpea value chain was a key focus for setting up a National Chickpea Innovation Platform. Other new initiatives include enhancing chickpea productivity and marketing based on the targets of the Ethiopian Growth and Transformation Plan 2 (GTP2) and enhancing household consumption for nutrition and food security– were discussed at a recent workshop in Ethiopia.

Opportunities

Participants generally agreed that chickpea has made remarkable increase in productivity over the last decade but has not reached its potential. Notably, chickpea productivity in Israel is 6.1 tons per ha, the highest in the world. The GTP2 has set a target of increasing the average productivity of chickpea from the current 1.91 tons per ha to 2.8 tons per ha and the total production from the current 0.45 million tons to 0.69 million tons by 2020.

Opportunities for achieving this goal include:

• Double cropping with cereals (tef, wheat, barley, maize and rice);
• Production in niches currently not being used;
• Increasing the number of chickpea processors;
• Involvement of research and development institutions to tackle biotic and abiotic stresses and design improved agronomic practices;
• Enhanced adoption of improved varieties and their production packages;
• Growing demand in major export destinations thus assuring farmers a market for their produce;
• Proximity to African (Egypt and Sudan), European and Middle Eastern markets relative to competitors such as Mexico, Canada and Australia;
• The ‘Supporting Indian Trade and Investment for Africa’ (SITA), a project linking Indian investors with African legume farmers.

Constraints

Many constraints along the chickpea value chain were also identified by the participants.

• Most international markets demand larger seed of uniform size. Produce from Ethiopia is of low quality (small grain size, mixed and impure) and faces strong competition from other chickpea exporting countries (Australia, Canada, Mexico).
• Current varieties lack traits of interest such as combining high yield, mechanized production and harvesting, market preferences and pest/disease resistance as well as tolerance to abiotic stress factors.
• Chickpea has received limited attention in terms of input supply especially fertilizers; only limited efforts have been put on improvement and exploitation of biological nitrogen fixation capacity.
• Chickpea is considered a secondary crop after investment in the main cereal crop. It faces stiff competition for resources, inputs and labor from cereals (tef, barley and wheat) which have better yields, allow mechanized operations and fetch better prices.
• Relative to cereals, chickpea does not receive sufficient attention by the national and regional extension systems.
• Technologies for effective cereal-chickpea double cropping are inadequate; major cereal production areas are under mechanized production while mechanization of chickpea production is still in rudimentary stages.
• Supply of seed of improved varieties is limited.
• Limited value addition in terms of scale and level and associated price volatility in the local (and export) market.