Identification and morphological characterization of promising kabuli chickpea genotypes for short-season environment in central India

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important food legume crop grown in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. In India, kabuli chickpea is grown in central India in ~0.5 million ha, predominantly under short winter (< 110 days). Efforts are underway to select promising genotypes at the Food Legume Research Platform (FLRP), Amlaha, located in intensive kabuli chickpea growing area of India. Sixty-four kabuli chickpea lines were evaluated for agronomic traits during 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 crop seasons at FLRP following simple 8 × 8 lattice design with two replications. The analysis of variance over two years revealed significant variation exists for days to flowering, plant height, maturity period, biomass, seed size and seed yield. It was observed that with similar maturity time (106 days), FLIP09-432C produced 2273 kg/ha, which out-yielded the popular variety in central India, JGK-3 by 15%. The breeding lines, FLIP09-436C, FLIP09-171C, FLIP09-373C and FLIP09-247C were also found promising for earliness (104–110 days), and high yielding with the good yield ability (1003–2273 kg/ha). These promising genotypes for a short duration with good yield have been selected and can be used for various chickpea breeding programmes to develop high yielding varieties in central India.