Evaluating of the morphological and phenological characteristics of cold tolerant chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes at Entezary sowing in Mashhad conditions

In order to evaluate phenological and morphological responses of cold tolerant chickpea genotypes to Entezary culture in Mashhad conditions, 81 cold tolerant chickpea accessions were cultured during growing year 2006-2007 in Research Farm of Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The experiment was carried out in lattice design with three replications including 9 blocks per replication and 9 plots per block. Results showed that there were significant differences among genotypes in terms of developmental traits including: sowing to emerging, emerging to flowering, flowering to podding and podding to maturity; and morphological traits including: plant height, number of branches per plant and sum of branches length per plant. Survival percentage (ratio of remaining plants at harvest date to the number of sowed seeds) in the 73% of samples was more than 75%. Furthermore, seed yield for 32% of tested genotypes was more than 40 g/m2. Vegetative growth duration, reproductive growth duration and plant height were the most important characteristics in seed yield determination. Based on these results and regarding to the remarkable yield of some studied accessions, it appears that some of the chickpea genotypes in collection of Mashhad with suitable agronomical characteristics, have appropriate potential for Entezary culture.