Breeding of pulses, especially chickpea, by exploiting genetic diversity using conventional methods has been practiced in the past. Nevertheless, these methods at present are inadequate for making any significant breakthrough to handle the world's ever-increasing food demand. In this bizarre scenario, induced mutations have emerged as big relief, and are largely exploited for developing improved high-yielding crop varieties and for discovering desired genes that control important agronomical traits. Gene mutation, leading to the quality advancement of well-adapted existing varieties, has been the pedestal for germplasm improvement. Pulses are more prone to biotic and abiotic stresses as compared to cereals. As a result, there is a serious need to develop such varieties having high resistance to the above-mentioned stresses. During the past eight and a half decades, around 3,139 improved crop varieties have been released globally derived either as direct mutants or from their progenies (http://mvgs.iaea.org). Vast numbers of these varieties like cereals, pulses, oil crops, root and tuber crops and ornamentals have been released in developing countries for cultivation, including India, resulting in massive economic impact. Lately, mutagenesis has received an immense impel for its use in a newfangled promising technique known as targeting induced local lesions in genomes. With the unfolding of novel biological fields such as genomics, functional genomics, bioinformatics and the emergence of other technologies based on these sciences, there has been an increased surge in induced mutations within the scientific community. The knowledge of functional and basic genetics of model legume crops will benefit chickpea breeders to comprehend that marker-assisted selection has great potential to develop biotic and abiotic stress-resistant varieties. The basic understanding of genes, which direct major agronomical traits, is essential for plant breeders to frame apposite approaches and execute them in breeding programmes for promising results. In this era, with growing human population, hunger ghosts are haunting millions of people all around. Under these circumstances, the salvaging step lies in tailoring better crop varieties embedded with superior proteins, minerals and high yield. Mutagenic agents, physical as well as chemical, are used to induce mutations and generate variations from which desired mutants may be selected. However, basic information vis-à-vis effectiveness of various mutagens and their possible role in generating polygenic variability is meagre among pulses in general and chickpea in particular. Hence, the present review condenses various facets of contemporary knowledge for pulse crop varietal improvement, particularly chickpea, through induced mutagenesis with special thrust on qualitative as well as yieldattributing traits.
