CHARACTERIZATION AND EVALUATION OF CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.) LANDRACES FOR AGRO - MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS

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 xvii 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