PLANT CELL BIOTECHNOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Chickpea breeding is constrained by a narrow genetic base and limited natural outcrossing, necessitating the identification of diverse parental lines to broaden genetic variation and enhance pre-breeding efforts. Given the lack of information on crossability variation within cultivated chickpea, this study evaluated a targeted set of diverse accessions to explore potential differences in crossability that could facilitate the utilization of genetic resources in breeding programs. The objective of this study was to determine the genetic variability, estimate the heritability and genetic advance for the 13 quantitative traits from a diverse panel of chickpea germplasm, consisting of ten accessions of desi and kabuli each along with four checks. The substantial amounts of genetic variability were shown with significant differences between genotypes for all traits, which provides ample opportunity for effective crop improvement. The high level of genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation for the number of tertiary branches and the number of apical secondary branches indicated that there is opportunity for improvement of these traits. The broad-sense heritability estimates were relatively high for most of the evaluated traits, with the highest estimates for the number of days to 50% flowering, 100 seed weight, and number of days to maturity, indicating strong genetic control over the expression of the trait. The 100-seed weight shown high levels of heritability and genetic advance as a percent of the mean which indicated predominant additive gene action and direct phenotypic selection will be effective. Therefore, the evaluated accessions could provide parental lines for future chickpea breeding programs for improving yield and diversifying the genetic base of the crop.