Department of Genetics & Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad-580 005, India.
*e-mail: siddugpb@yahoo.co.in
High variability for maturity and its components traits indicating earliness like days to flower initiation, days to 50% flowering and days to pod initiation was observed in a recombinant inbred lines (RILs) developed from cross between ICCV 2 and JG-62. Duration of reproductive period (DRP) was computed based on the difference between physiological maturity and days to flowering initiation. DRP did not show any correlation with maturity indicating the possibility of getting varying lines of DRP with a range of maturity levels in a given environment. A critical length of DRP of 50–60 days was found more ideal with a crop duration of about 90 days as observed from the study. It is suggested to investigate the DRP for chickpea ecologies with different characteristic maturity period. Association analysis indicated that DRP influences yield mainly through pods per plant.
Chickpea, RILs (Recombinant Inbred Lines), Days to flowering, Reproductive period, Duration, Phenological traits, Productivity
