Interaction of mesorhizobia, vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza and different chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes for nitrogen fixing and yield attributing traits

Twenty genotypes of chickpea were evaluated to study the interaction of chickpea genotypes, mesorhizobial strains and vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza for 14 nitrogen fixing and yield attributing traits viz. days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant, 100 seed weight (g), seed yield per plant (g), number ofnodules per plant, noduleweight per plant(g), root dryweight per plant (g), shoot dry weight per plant (g), nitrogen content in shoot (%), nitrogen content in grain (%) and VAM infection(%). The analysis of variance revealed the existence of significant amount of genetic variability in the material for all the traits. All the genotypes were treated with thre etreatments separately(Mesorhizobium sp. Strain CH 1233 (S1); Mesorhizobium sp. Strain CH 810 (S2); vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) (Glomus fasiculatum) and one set was used as uninoculated control. These were grown separately following randomized block design with three replications in each treatment. Comparative analysis indicated the differences between the treatments and behaviour of the genotypes in different environments. In general S1 and VAM showed beneficial interaction for maximum number of traits for all thegenotypes. The effect of VAM wasthe most apparent among treatments. On overall basis, genotypes viz. HC 3, HC 5, GL 94022, ICC 5003LN, HK 2, GNG 663 and BG 362 were observed to be better performing and responsive to bio inoculants having one or more superior traits. These genotypes performing better for specific traits can be used as parents in hybridization programme for improvement of that particular trait.