Performance of chickpea varieties under rainfed black soils of Chamarajanagara district, Karnataka (zone-6)

The major constraint in rainfed chickpea cultivation is unavailability of short duration, wilt resistant and high yielding varieties in Chamarajanagara district. In this regard, an investigation was carried out to identify suitable high yielding varieties for Chamarajanagara District, Karnataka (Zone-6).

As a part of on farm testing of ICAR-KVK, Chamarajanagara conducted a field experiment during rabi 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 (Three years) in farmers field at Kotamballi village. Four chickpea varieties viz., Annigere-1, JG-11, Jaki-9218 and BGD- 103 were tested under randomized complete block design (RCBD) which was replicated seven times.

The study revealed that chickpea variety BGD-103 recorded significantly higher grain yield (14.28 q/ha) and per cent protein content (20.10%) with the minimum disease incidence of 7.93 per cent. The growth and yield parameters were also better with BGD- 103 variety as compared to other varieties. The highest wilt incidence of 29.2 per cent was recorded with chickpea variety A-1 followed by JG-11 (26.09%). The highest net return of 35703/ha and benefit cost ratio of 2.16 was recorded in BGD-103 compared to other varieties. The investigation revealed that BGD-103 was found to be suitable variety for rainfed black soils of Karnataka (Zone-6) due to minimum wilt incidence, short duration nature, higher seed yield and per day productivity.