Abstract:
Landraces constitute the basic material for developing any variety or hybrid. Ethiopia has a
large number of Desi chickpea landraces cultivated by the farmers through traditional method
of selection over centuries. However, chickpea yield in Ethiopia is still below the realizable
potential. And the amount and regional distribution of chickpea diversity in the country is
relatively unknown and exploitation of valuable local diversity for breeding higher yielding
varieties is hindered by lack of this information. Thus, two hundred two chickpea accessions
and two released varieties, Fetenech (early maturing) and Minjar (high yielder), were tested to
characterize and evaluate the landraces for agro morphological traits, to estimate genetic
variability in the landrace collections, and to study the associations among the traits. The
experiment was conducted at Sirinka under rainfed condition in 2016 growing season using
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alpha lattice design with three replications. Data were collected on yield and yield related
traits and diseases. Analysis of variance showed highly significant difference (P<0.001)
among the tested genotypes for all traits considered in the study, indicating the presence of
genetic variability. Grain yield varied between 563 and 2794 kg/ ha. Grain yield, number of
pods per plant, biomass yield, and hundred seed weight, which had high values of GCV,
heritability and genetic advance as percentage of the mean, are the most important traits
which could be easily be improved through selection. The correlation of grain yield with
biomass and harvest index was positive and highly significant both at genotypic and
phenotypic levels. Cluster analysis grouped the genotypes into five clusters for both
quantitative (16) and qualitative (8) traits. The highest diversity indices pooled over
characters within zones were recorded for accessions from South West Shewa (H= 2.03 ±
0.05) followed by Gurage (H=0.81 ± 0.08), West Shewa (H=0.73 ± 0.04) and North Gonder
(H= 0.72 ± 0.05). Twelve accessions superpassed the standard checks for grain yield, and
54% of the genotypes were free from Fusarium wilt. The existence of wider
morpho-agronomic diversity among the chickpea collections implies the potential to improve
the crop and the need to conserve the diversity
