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(Nene and Haware, 1980). The legume pod borer has been the worst of ail accounting for
over 20% of the total crop loss (Vyas et al, 1983). The enhancement of insect and disease
resistance in chickpea could increase its yield potential by as much as three times. The
available chickpea germplasm also lacks effective resistance sources for use in developing
pest resistant genotypes. An attractive option is to introduce genes for insect resistance
from other sources to chickpea by the iise of transgenic technology that has shown a great
promise (Sharma and Ortiz, 2000).
Attempts to create transgenic chickpea to combat tlie above constraints have been
the short cut strategy adopted by various groups working for creation of el~te germplasm of
chickpea. However, reliable regeneration and transfor~nntio~i protocols lmve been evaduig
sucli efforts due to tlie perce~ved recalcitranl nature of chickpea towards tissue culture.
Several regeneration protocols involving somatic ernb~yogenesis and orgallogenesis have
been published during past one and half decade olily to show the difficulty in regelierati~ig
chickpea in the in vltro cnvlroiiment. Micropropagation has inot been a serious problem and
it can be ;ichieved using explant co~itai~iit~g prc-cxisting Illerlstema such as shoot tip and
cotyledonary nodes (Rao and Chopra, 1987; Riazuddin et a]., 1988; Rao and Chopra,
1989). Coiisiderable work has been done for regenerating wliole plants via sonlatic
embryogenesis from mature leaflets (Rao and Chopra, 1989) and imn~ature leatlets (Barna
and Wakiiulu, 19931, niaturc emrbryo axis (Sul~as~~ii ct ol., 1994) and initnature embryo
axis (Sagare et a]., 1993) or cell suspension cultures (Prakasli et a]., 1994). Ilowever, the
success rates on the niatiirat~on of indilced embryos into fully differentiated plants have
been very low (