amino acids. Thus, chickpea could be a good source of arginine provided
that an affordable purification protocol could be implemented
to purify arginine from the free amino acids pool. Other
free amino acids at substantial levels in chickpea seeds are glutamic
acid, aspartic acid, leucine and tryptophan (Table 1).
Extraction of free amino acids was carried out at pH 4.3 in order
to minimize protein solubilization