Identification of cold tolerant chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes suitable for mid-hills of northern India

Abstract

Low temperature is a major constraint in chickpea (Gicer arietinum L.) production in the hilly zones. It was therefore, considered worthwhile to screen the chickpea genotypes for cold tolerance and to understand its association with other plant traits. A field experiment using 125 chickpea diverse cultures was conducted in augmented RBD design having five block and three checks during rabi 2003-04. The average minimum temperature during the crop season was 3.4°C (range : 0.7°C to 10.9°C ). The plot size for each genotype was single row of 3 m length sown on November 21, 2003. Germination (at 25 days after sowing), days to anthesis (first flower opening), flowering (50%) and maturity of each genotype were recorded accordingly on plot basis. Following methods described earlier, pod partitioning coefficient (%) and pod setting (%) [1] of all the genotypes were recorded per plant sharply at the end of cold spell. Plant height (cm). grain yield (q/ha) and 100 seed weight (g) of each plot were measured at harvest. The .cold tolerance was scored on a 1-5 scale (1: > 75%; 2: 50-75%; 3: 25-50%; 4:5-25%; 5: less than 5% pod set) sharply at the end of cold spell as described elsewhere [3]. Path analysis using cold tolerance, as dependent characters while other characters under study were treated as independent, was carried out following the method of Dewey and Lu [2].