CHARACTERIZATION AND EVALUATION OF CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.) LANDRACES FOR AGRO - MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS

Abstract:

Landraces constitute the basic material for developing any variety or hybrid. Ethiopia has a large number of Desi chickpea landraces cultivated by the farmers through traditional method of selection over centuries. However, chickpea yield in Ethiopia is still below the realizable potential. And the amount and regional distribution of chickpea diversity in the country is relatively unknown and exploitation of valuable local diversity for breeding higher yielding varieties is hindered by lack of this information. Thus, two hundred two chickpea accessions and two released varieties, Fetenech (early maturing) and Minjar (high yielder), were tested to characterize and evaluate the landraces for agro morphological traits, to estimate genetic variability in the landrace collections, and to study the associations among the traits. The experiment was conducted at Sirinka under rainfed condition in 2016 growing season using xvii alpha lattice design with three replications. Data were collected on yield and yield related traits and diseases. Analysis of variance showed highly significant difference (P