CHICKPEA
Cicer arietinum
Chickpea
Eric has been involved in many projects working with chickpea, a prominent cultivated legume originally from the Middle East. The von-Vettburg lab is a partner with USAID's FTF Innovation Lab for chickpea, working with partners in Ethiopia to create new varieties of Cicer sp. to adapt to climate change and pathogens. Work has been done using population genetics, seed nutritional chemistry, and field trials on the wild Cicer reticulatum.
Other work with chickpeas include exploring the inadvertent consequences of crop domestication on chickpeas and lentils, which was supported by NSF's PGRP program. The project explored how domestication of annual crops can lead to changes in plant phenotype and genotype. One such change is altered rhizobia relationships, where cultivated legumes do not form nodules with bacterial symbionts. This project was in collaboration with UC Davis's Chickpea Lab and Dicle University in Turkey.