Legume Research
Web of Science
  • Year: 2025
  • Volume: 48
  • Issue: 8

Genetic Diversity Studies and Fusarium Wilt Screening in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Germplasm

  • Author:
  • Hamsa Ram1,, Laxuman2,*, Mallikarjun Kenganal2, S. Muniswamy2, G.Y. Lokesh1, Srinivasan Samineni3
  • Total Page Count: 9
  • Page Number: 1249 to 1257

1Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur-584 104, Karnataka, India

2Zonal Agricultural Research Station, Kalaburagi-585 101, Karnataka, India

3International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru-502 324, Telangana, India

*Corresponding Author: Laxuman, Zonal Agricultural Research Station, Kalaburagi-585 101, Karnataka, India, Email: laxumanc@uasraichur.edu.in

Online published on 10 March, 2026.

Abstract

The genetic base of chickpea has narrowed substantially during the domestication and recent crop improvement is unable to meet the demands due to very few common parents in hybridization process. Therefore, increasing the genetic divergence of chickpea has been a major goal for breeders. The assessment of genetic diversity of chickpea germplasm can provide a valuable information to the breeder for parental selection strategies in plant breeding programs.

Two hundred and eighty chickpea germplasm including two checks (JG-11 and SA-1) were tested with an objective to explore the genetic divergence by using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Among the 280 germplasm lines, 269 germplasm lines were selected from ICRISAT core set chickpea germplasm and 11 advanced breeding lines and varieties from AICRP, scheme from ZARS Kalaburagi. The field experiment was carried out in augmented block design (ABD) during Rabi 2021-22. The magnitude of genetic divergence was studied using data obtained from five quantitative traits.

The 280 genotypes including checks were divided into seventeen clusters based on their D2 values. Out of seventeen clusters, cluster II (89 genotypes) was the largest followed by cluster I (83 genotypes), cluster III (31 genotypes), cluster VIII (29 genotypes), cluster VII (24 genotypes), cluster VII (15 genotypes). Same set of germplasm were also screened for fusarium wilt in wilt sick plot, 30 germplasm lines showed resistant (10.71%), 83 moderately resistant (29.64%), 44 moderately susceptible (15.71%), 31 susceptible (11.07%) and 92 highly susceptible reaction to fusarium wilt. Clusters XIV and XVI had extreme genetic distance and the germplasm lines in these cluster also showed moderate resistance to fusarium wilt (ICC 1098, ICC 11284 and ICC 10466).

Keywords

Chickpea, Diversity, Fusarium wilt, Germplasm