Genetic studies on chlorophyll content in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

A field experiment was conducted during rabi 2011–2012 on seven parents and 21 hybrids of chickpea to study the nature of gene action and to identify promising parents and superior cross combinations for chlorophyll content and it's surrogate trait SPAD Chlorophyll Meter Reading (SCMR) in chickpea. Both gca and sca variances were highly significant for chlorophyll ‘a’, chlorophyll ‘b’, total chlorophyll content and SCMR, indicating the importance of both additive and non additive genetic variance in the inheritance of these traits. The higher estimates of variance due to sca than variance due to gca for all the four traits revealed that non additive gene action was found to be predominant in the expression of these characters. The parents JG-11 and Vihar were good general combiners for chlorophyll ‘a’, chlorophyll ‘b’ and total chlorophyll content and JG-11 and ICCV 05106 recorded significant gca effects for SCMR. Promising crosses viz., ICCV 05106 x MNK-1, ICCV 05106 x KAK-2, MNK-1 x Vihar and ICCV 95333 x KAK-2 which exhibited significant positive sca effects for all the four characters studied, could be exploited in future breeding programmes for drought tolerance in chickpea.