1Agriculture Research Station Gulbarga, 585 102, Karnataka, India.
2University of Agriculture Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, India.
3Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, College of Agriculture, Bichpuri, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Four drought tolerance traits viz. earliness, root length, root weight and low evapo-transpiration were considered for developing enhanced drought tolerance in chickpea. The genotypes ICCV 2, A 1, ICCV 4958 and ICCV 10448 were taken as drought tolerant parents. Six segregating populations were developed through introgressing these genotypes in all possible combinations and evaluated along with parents and F1's under rainfed condition during 2004 rabi season. Ten plant each of parents, F1's and 100 plants selected from six F2's were planted in perforated polythene bag (120 cm x 15 cm) filled with native soil mixture and buried in field during pre-rainy seasons to mimic natural soil moisture condition.
Among parents, ICCV 2 was found earliest to flower (41.9 day). The highest root length was recorded by A 1 (69.3 cm/plant) however the highest root mass of 1.51 g/plant was noticed in ICCV 4958. Out of six hundred F2 progenies assessed, the highest yield was observed in the progenies wherever ICCV 4958 was one of the parent compared to the yield of progenies of A 1 mean + 2σ. The segregants of cross A 1 X ICCV 4958, ICCV 2 X ICCV 4958 were found promising for seed yield earliness and root traits. The crosses involving ICCV 2, A 1 and ICCV 4958 found to be important parental line. The study indicated that combinations of different drought avoidance mechanisms like earliness and root mass are important for breeding enhanced drought tolerance.
Chickpea, Drought avoidance, Earliness, Root
