Lentil belongs to the Family Fabacaeae, Genus Lens, Species Lens culinaris and Subspecies culinaris. Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik. ssp. culinaris) is one of the oldest cultivated plants that originated in the Near East arc and Asia Minor. This cool season legume crop is an excellent food source to provide energy, proteins and iron in the human diet. Cultivated lentil is a self-pollinated diploid plant with 2n = 2x = 14 chromosomes and a genome size of 4 Gbp. The lentil is an edible legume. It is an annual plant known for its lens-shaped seeds. It is about 40 cm tall, and the seeds grow in pods, usually with two seeds in each. As a food crop, the largest producer is Canada, producing 45% of the world's total lentils. Many different names in different parts of the world are used for the crop lentil. The first use of the word lens to designate a specific genus was in the 17th century by the botanist Tournefort. The word "lens" for the lentil is of classical Roman or Latin origin, possibly from a prominent Roman family named Lentulus, just as the family name "Cicero" was derived from the chickpea, Cicer arietinum, or "Fabia" (as in Quintus Fabius Maximus) from the fava bean (Vicia faba). Types can be classified according to their size, whether they are split or whole, or shelled or unshelled. Seed coats can range from light green to deep purple, as well as being tan, grey, brown, black or mottled. Shelled lentils show the colour of the cotyledon which can be yellow, orange, red, or green. Lentils are often categorized by their color, which can range from yellow and red to green, brown, or black. This species has been cultivated for 10,000 years in several regions worldwide, especially in West Asia, Australia, North and South America, Mediterranean basin, Middle East, and in the Indian sub-continent. It is a valuable human food, mostly consumed as dry seeds (whole decorticated, seed decorticated and split). In Indian sub-continent mostly consumed as ‘Dal’ by removal of outer skin and separation of cotyledons, snacks and soup preparation etc. It is easy to cook and easily digestible with high biological value, hence also referred to patient. Dry leaves, stems, empty and broken pods are used as valuable cattle feed. Lentils are a good source of protein, dietary fibre, vitamin B, iron, and phosphorus. Thus far, lentil breeders have been successful in improving some easily manageable monogenic traits using conventional breeding techniques of selection and recombination. However, these conventional techniques are insufficient to address economic traits like seed yield due to polygenic inheritance and genotype-environment interaction. Cultivated lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus ssp. culinaris) is the third most important cool-season grain legume in the world after chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and pea (Pisum sativum L.). In this review article on Origin, Domestication, Taxonomy, Botanical Description, Genetics and Cytogenetics, Genetic Diversity, Genetics and Cytogenetics, Breeding, Uses, Nutritional Value and Health Benefits of Chickpea are discussed.
