Grain Yield, Its Components, Genetic Diversity and Heritability in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

The current research was carried out to investigate grain yield and components and their genetic diversity and heritability of some important agronomic traits, in 19 chickpea genotypes, based on a randomized complete block design with 3 replications in Research Field of Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamadan, Iran in 2011-2012 growing seasons. The ANOVA results showed that, there were highly significant differences (p < 0.01) among genotypes for the SPAD number, number of sub-branch per plant, pod number per plant, 100-kernel weight, grain yield, biological yield, and harvest index. The mean comparisons results indicated that the genotypes 14, 12, 4 and 19 (with 234.7, 240, 250.3 and 259.4 kilogram of grain yield per ha, respectively) and the genotypes 18, 8, 15, and 6 (with 151.01, 167.6, 167.8 and 189 kilogram of grain yield per ha, respectively) had the maximum and minimum economic yield, respectively. According to phonotypical correlation results, there were positive and significant (p < 0.01) correlations between grain yield and pod number per plant (0.623**), plant height (0.432**), harvest index (0.425**) and biomass (0.349**). Step-wise regression indicated that the pod number per plant, harvest index, biomass, number of sub-branch per plant, and plant height were the most effective traits on economic yield and they explained 84.68 percent of the variation in economic yield. Furthermore, harvest index and seed number per plant had the maximum and minimum heritability, respectively, indicating that they could be hired as sources of variation for improving the grain yield and selecting superior genotypes