Chickpea

• Its mission is to encourage healthier lifestyles and elevate culinary experiences — on hot summer days and beyond.
• Salads are undeniably the popular choice during the sizzling summer months.
• Picture this: A bowl brimming over with an assortment of fresh, vibrant colors that crunch delightfully with each bite.
• Campaign organizer proposes an adventure with a salad of fresh and preserved vegetables, with chickpeas and red kidney beans.

• For millennia, farmers have bred grains, fruit and vegetable varieties to get larger harvests and plants better able to tolerate different climates.
• But climate change is going to bring enormous disruption to the plants we rely on.
• Our team has been working to climate-proof five popular fruits – banana, the single most commonly bought item in supermarkets, as well as pineapple, passionfruit, custard apples and paw paw.
• We’ve already done this with chickpeas to produce new, more resilient varieties.

What does climate change mean for horticulture?

• Droughts have become more severe, heatwaves and fire have intensified, and intense rainfall and floods are more common.
• The warping climate and heightened instability make it harder for fruit farmers to plan.
• Read more:
  Farms are adapting well to climate change, but there's work ahead

What can we do?

• Modern tools such as whole genome sequencing and allele mining are letting us get better at finding how vital traits are coded on a tree’s genome.
• This, in turn, can help us target traits like drought and heat tolerance which will be valuable in the future.
• With this knowledge, we can manipulate these genes to get stronger effects, or transfer them to other plants using modern breeding techniques.
• We have already used these techniques to find genes in chickpeas that code for better drought resistance.
• Plants with these genes can survive temperatures of up to 38℃ and produce better yields to boot.

• ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Jan. 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, a leading fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant franchise, is expanding its menu with new items, and a focus on health-conscious, "Livin' Light" meals to start the new year.
• Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh's new menu items include:
  Roasted Garlic Hummus (available January 9 – April 2): Wholesome, versatile, and packed with robust flavors and health benefits, this hummus contains roasted garlic and Mediterranean spices – perfect to pair with pita.
• In addition to new menu items, every Monday throughout the month of April, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh will also be celebrating "Fry-day" to highlight one of its most craveable menu items –Signature fries seasoned with shawarma spices.
• "Starting the new year, many have a renewed focus on healthy eating," said John Geyerman, Chief Brand Officer of Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh.

• Plant-based foods, such as chickpeas, represent a significant economic opportunity for Canadian companies to meet growing global and consumer demands for protein-rich foods that are healthy and environmentally sustainable.
• The consortium will address this market by creating protein-packed salad dressings, sauces, breading, frozen desserts and other protein alternatives made from Canadian chickpeas.
• Canadian companies are again demonstrating their commitment to innovative plant-based foods and ingredients, Protein Industries Canada CEO Bill Greuel said.
• InnovoPro is committed to bringing unique chickpea protein platform to the global food & beverage market, for creating nutritious, tasty, and sustainable food products.