Department of Life Science, Singhania University, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, 333515, India

                Department of Biotechnology, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal (Central) University, Srinagar Garhwal, Uttarakhand, 246174, India

                             Division of Entomology, Indian Agricultural Research, Institute (IARI), New Delhi 110012, India

There are several economically important grain legumes including chickpea that play significant role in nutrition of the rural and urban poor in developing world. Plants are subjected to a large number of stresses that may interfere with the normal growth and development. The model legumes are being developed as experimental systems to study a number of key biological questions using molecular tools including genomics and proteomics. Most of the functional genomics approaches rely upon the high-throughput transformation system useful for studying various gene identification strategies. The difficulty to transform a plant varies from species to species in legumes. There is limited success in exchange of the desirable characters by the classical and modern breeding technologies, in important pulse crop chickpea and biotechnological tools like plant tissue culture and genetic transformation techniques have emerged as a potential supplement. The major bottleneck is requirement of an in vitro manipulation of leguminosae members and the availability of reproducible, efficient and better plant regeneration methods. The regeneration and transformation of legumes particularly chickpea suffers due to recalcitrant nature towards rooting and transplantation of the in vitro regenerated plants. This becomes a limiting factor for the application of this technology towards designated mandate of crop improvement programs. This article discusses the hurdles and strategies for transformation of legumes in general and chickpea in particular.

 Key words: Cicer arietinum, Legume, Chickpea, Transformation, Regeneration, Organogenesis