Chickpea is an important pulse crop worldwide. In tropical countries like India, it is grown in winter on residual soil moisture. Drought stress, caused by receding water levels and increased temperature, is a major problem in chickpea during its growth phase. Therefore, this study was aimed at detecting molecular diversity in chickpea germplasm for developing genotypes with drought tolerance. Sixty accessions including germplasm, varieties, and exotic lines originating from 24 varied geographical locations globally were used for genetic diversity study. PCR primers were designed based on retrotransposable elements of chickpea and used for Retrotransposon Microsatellite-Amplified Polymorphism (REMAP) for the first time in chickpea. In addition Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) and Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers were included in this study. Polymorphism per primer ranged from 20–85.7% (average 48%) in REMAP, 20–100% (average 42.1%) in ISSR, and 80–100% (average 97.2%) in SSR markers. With combined data from all three markers, clustering analysis using Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic Averages (UPGMA) grouped 13 drought-tolerant accessions in a single cluster, indicating the presence of a common genetic base for drought tolerance in these accessions. Some agronomically superior accessions from this group will be used for breeding, studying genetics, and tagging drought-tolerance genes.
Chickpea, Drought, genetic diversity, ISSR, legumes, REMAP, SSR
