Assessment of Cold Tolerance of Chickpea at Rainfed Highlands of Iran

Abstract: Work on cold tolerance in chickpea was initiated when the advantages of advancing its sowing date from traditional spring sowing to winter were established. In order to identify and select high-yielding and cold tolerance varieties in high altitude and cool regions, genetic variation of forty accessions of chickpea as well as one susceptible check (ILC 533) was studied in a RCB design with two replications at rainfed autumn sowing of Kurdistan province, west of Iran. In this nursery the susceptible check (ILC 533) repeated after every two test entries and different characteristics and variables such as seed yield, days from sowing to flowering, 100-seed weight, plant height, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, number of primary branches and number of secondary branches were recorded. Annual and combined analysis of variance revealed that there were significant differences between genotypes for seed yield, number of secondary branches, 100-seed weight and cold tolerance score (P<0.05).The correlation coefficient of seed yield with 100seeds weight and cold tolerance rate were found negative and significant at 1 % probability level and secondary branches number positive and significant at 1 % probability level. Sixteen entries showed a desirable reaction (3 on 1 to 9 scale, where 1 = free, 9 = killed due to frost). The highly cold tolerant entries (FLIP 95-255C, FLIP 93-260C and Sel95TH1716) are derived from hybrids of cultivated varieties with ILWC 182 (C. reticulatum) a wild relation of cultigen (C. arietinum L.)