Evaluation and identification of drought tolerant wild annual Cicer accessions for enhancing genetic gains towards chickpea improvement

Chickpea is an annual food legume crop widely grown under rainfed environment where drought stress occur frequently limiting crop production. In the present study, 39 wild annual Cicer accessions belonging to five species viz. Cicer reticulatum Ladizinsky, C. echinospermum P.H. Davis, C. judaicum Boiss., C. pinnatifidum Jarb. & Spach, and C. yamashitae Kitam along with two check varieties of cultivated chickpea namely, ICC 4958 (drought tolerant) and BG 1053 (drought susceptible), were screened for drought tolerance under controlled conditions. The wild Cicer accessions exhibited significant variations for 14 agro-physiological traits based on analysis of variance and boxplot. The hierarchical clustering using Ward’s function and principal component analysis clearly indicated the genetic diversity present in the wild Cicer species. Among the wild species, C. judaicum and C. reticulatum accessions were mainly found tolerant for physiological and agronomical traits respectively. Donors for multiple traits associated with drought tolerance were identified namely, ILWC 20, ILWC 38 (C. judaicum); ILWC 46, ILWC 219 (C. reticulatum) and ILWC 214 (C. yamashitae). The identified promising Cicer accessions would be useful in developing chickpea varieties with enhanced resilience to low moisture condition by broadening the genetic base and introgression of desired genes.