Genetic variability for drought tolerance and yield traits in chickpea

In breeding for drought tolerance in chickpea, incorporation of traits that confer water use efficiency into promising varieties can greatly help in improving productivity. Light weight SPAD chlorophyll metres provide relative values of leaf chlorophyll content and are helpful for rapid and non destructive measurement of leaf chlorophyll in large number of plants in segregating generations. Therefore, genetic variability in 15 F₂ populations for yield and drought tolerant attributes was studied at Regional agricultural Research Station, Nandyal, Andhra Pradesh. The study indicated scope for isolation of superior segregants for drought tolerance traits viz., ‘SCMR’ and root length in ‘JG-11’ × ‘ICC 506 EB’ and ‘JAKI-9218’ × ‘ICC 506 EB’ which exhibited higher values of genetic parameters for these traits. Promising crosses for yield and yield contributing characters were ‘JG 11’ × ‘ICC 4958’, ‘JAKI 9218’ × ‘ICC 4958’ and ‘M. Dollar’ × ‘ICC 4958’. Whereas ‘KAK 2’ × ‘ICC 506 EB’ with high GCV, high heritability and moderate GAM for seed yield was promising for root length, ‘M. Dollar’ × ‘ICC 506 EB’ with high GCV, high heritability and moderate GAM for seed yield was found to be promising for SCMR and plant height.