Hard-to-cook tendency of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L) varieties

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L) develop the hard-to-cook (HTC) defect during storage at high temperatures (>25°C) and high relative humidities (RH>65%). The objective of this work was to assess the tendency of chickpea varieties to become HTC. Three samples of chickpeas (Surutato 77, Mocorito 88 and Blanco Sinaloa 92) were grown under irrigation conditions. Two hardening procedures were used: (1) storage hardening - samples were stored at 33-35°C and 76% relative humidity for 160 days; (2) chemical hardening - materials were soaked in 0.1 M acetate buffer (pH 4.0) at 37°C for 1-7h. The cooking time curves generated by chemical hardening had shapes similar to those obtained by storage hardening; both procedures were equally capable of discriminating chickpea varieties based on their susceptibility to develop the HTC condition. Chemical hardening might be useful for screening new chickpea varieties; its advantage over the storage method is its rapidity.