Study of phenological and morphological characteristics of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cold tolerant genotypes in fall planting

In order to evaluate phenological and morphological characteristics of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cold tolerant genotypes, a field trial carried out on 2004-2005 at the experimental field of College of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. In this study 152 cold tolerant accessions with 4 checks (Karaj12-60-31, ILC482, ILC3279 and FLIP84-48C) were evaluated in the Augmented preliminarily design in fall planting (9 October). There were considerable variations among genotypes with each other and with checks about phonological stages (days from sowing to emergence, emergence to flowering and flowering to ripening) and morphological characteristics (plant height, number of branches and their length per plant). The differences in all cases were significant (p≤0.05). Vegetative growth period was more than 165 days in 84% of accessions and reproductive growth period was more than 29 days in 87% of them. The height of plant in 86% of accessions was more than 30cm, and total branch length per plant was more than 300cm in 82% of accessions. According to the results and regarding to the remarkable yield of some accessions, there is a suitable possibility for selecting genotypes with suitable agronomical characteristics in order to continue cold tolerance trials in replicated experiments.