The Inheritance of Some Quantitative Traits in the Chickpea through the Generation Mean Analysis

In order to study the type of action of genes and inheritance of traits in chickpea, the generation mean analysis was accomplished using the cross of six cultivars of chickpea called Pirouz, Bivanich, Flip51-87c, Iccv2, Kaka, and Azad. Parent seeds along with seeds of F1, F2, BC1, and BC2 were cultivated in a randomized complete block design with three replications, and eight traits including plant height, number of seeds per plant, number of pods per plant, number of hollow pods per plant, number of double-grain pods per plant, 100-seed weight, number of days to 50% flowering, and grain yield were evaluated. The variance analysis results indicated that the mean squares of generations were significant for all the traits, so the generation mean analysis for the studied traits was performed. Based on the results of generation mean analysis for all the studied traits besides the additive and dominant effects, epistatic effects were also fitted which indicates the complexity of the inheritance of these traits. The results also showed that the plant height was controlled by incremental and dominating effects. It was also determined that the dominant genetic effect has the most significant role in the inheritance of most of the studied traits.