Assessment of Interrelationship among Agronomic and Yield Characters of Chickpea

This study was conducted to analyze the association among agronomic traits and with seed yield for fifty eight chickpea genotypes including two check varieties under field conditions. Alpha lattice design with three replications was used. Data agro-morphological traits were recorded using descriptors for chickpea and analysed using Genstat 2015. The results showed there was positive and significant correlation of seed yield with biomass, pod filling period, pod plant -1, number of primary and secondary branches plant -1. These traits could be improved simultaneously and given prior emphasis for indirect selection of high yielding chickpea genotypes. Principal component analysis indicated that the existence of genetic variation among the evaluated genotypes. The first four principal components explained significant proportion of the total variations and accounted for 77.04 %. The first principal component was positively associated with days to flowering, plant spread, plant height, number of primary and secondary branches plant -1, days to maturity, pods plant -1, pod length, biomass and seed yield. The second principal component was positively related with plant spread, pod length, plant height, pod filling period, pod plant -1, seed yield and 100 seed weight. These could be a good indication for significance of both agronomic and yield traits attributed substantially to the overall variations among genotypes. The presence of substantial genetic variations, positive and highly significant correlated characters can be exploited in breeding programmes for improvement of chickpea in the regio