Genetic Analysis for Phenological Characters in Desi x Desi Crosses of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under Timely and Late Sown Conditions

Aims: To study of gene effects for phenological characters in chickpea crosses under different environmental conditions.

Study Design: Compact family block design (CFBD was followed.

Place and Duration of Study: The experiment was conducted at research farm, Rajasthan Agricultural Research Institute, Durgapura (SKNAU, Jobner, Jaipur, Rajasathan) during rabi 2020-2022.

Methodology: The experimental material consisted of parents (P1, P2), F1’s, F2’s, and back crosses with both the parents (B1 and B2) of three chickpea crosses. The six basic generations viz., P1, P2, F1, F2, B1 and B2 of the three crosses viz., RSG-807 × RSG-895, RSG-895 × HC-5 and RSG-974 × Avrodhi were raised in compact family block design (CFBD) with three replications with two environments viz., timely sown (E1) condition and late sown (E2) conditions which were created by different date of sowing, first- November and first-December, 2021, respectively.

Results: Pooled analysis of variance (ANOVA) over environments and simple ANOVA for difference among generations within cross in each environment were observed significant in all three crosses for both the characters. Means values of all six generations were lower in late sown condition as compare to timely sown condition in all cases. Simple additive-dominance model was found inadequate for both of the characters studied in all the crosses under both the conditions. The result of the generation mean analysis showed that non-additive gene effects were more contributed for the inheritance of traits in most of the cases, then additive gene effects.

Conclusion: Among the all crosses, the mean performance of f1 generation of cross RSG-807 × RSG-895 was found low for days to 50 % flowering as well as maturity under both the conditions and durations of flowering and maturity were hastened under late sown conditions; therefore, early maturity varieties may be developed. However, due to presence of non-fixable gene effects selection for short durations for flowering and maturity will not effective in early segregating generations. In such situations, simple pedigree method of selection alone is ineffective. Instead, biparental mating followed by selection of desired recombinants from the segregating population is desirable. Since considerable amount of dominance effect was also present for most of the traits, selection of superior segregants has to be delayed to later generations until homozygosity is achieved.