I - --ii

Proceedings of the Workshop on Ascochyta Blight and Winter Sowing ofChickpeas (Saxena, M.
and Singh. K.B.. eds.). ICARDA, 4-7 May 1981. Aleppo. Syria
Cyprus Country Report on Chickpeas
I. PHOTIADES
Agricultural Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture and
Natural Re sources, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Chickpea is one of the traditionally grown crops in Cyprus. As human food, dry
chickpea grain is used either boiled, or made into hommos, or roasted and eaten
as snack.
Area, yields and production data are shown in Table 1. Imports, exports and
their respective values are shown in Table 2, which also shows the consumption,
i.e. production + imports-exports; consumption includes the amount of chickpea
which goes into the canning industry for preparing hommos, the biggest part of
which is exported. The distribution of chickpea production is shown in Figure 1.
The area and production of chickpea peaked in 1979 (Tables 1 and 2) due to
the high prices that were obtained by chickpea and food legumes in general,
during that period in Cyprus. Exports in 1977 and 1978 were quite high - mainly
exports of chickpea seed (Anon. 1981). Also, 181 and 122 tonnes of chickpea
Table I
Area, yields and production of chickpea in Cyprus.
Year Area (ha) Yield (kg/ha) Production (t)
1960 682 447 305
1970 401 761 305
1971 1338 493 660
1972 1472 276 406
1973 669 152 102
1974 1070 285 305
1975 535 570 305
1976 535 761 406
1977 669 911 610
1978 669 897 600
1979 1205 705 850
219
.