Genetic analysis of earliness in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) using generation mean analysis

This experiment was conducted to determine gene action for different traits of chickpea including days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, 100-seeds weight, number of pods per plant and seed yield. Five genotypes including Arman, Hashem, ILC588, ICCV2 and ILC3279 were selected and crossed with each other. Four generations of each cross along with parents were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications. In each replication 15 plants for P1, P2 and F1, 30 plants for BC1 and BC2, and 60 plants for F2 were evaluated for all traits. Joint scaling test and chi-square test were used to estimate the gene action. The Chi-square of simple three parametric models was significant for all traits except for plant height, indicating the presence of non allelic-interactions in the inheritance of these traits in chickpea. Both additive and dominant genetic effects were significant for days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of pods per plant and seed yield. In addition, presence of high amount of dominant effect and dominant × dominant interactions suggests the importance of non-additive genetic effects for these traits in chickpea. Therefore, selection for these traits in early generations could not be effectively successful. However, additive genetic effects play an important role in the inheritance of plant height and 100-seed weight, promising selection for these traits in early generations during the process of chickpea breeding.