Identification of diverse agronomic traits in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) germplasm lines to use in crop improvement

A chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) collection consisting of 445 Kabuli-type collected from different locations of Iran was evaluated based on six qualitative and 14 quantitative morphological descriptors. Chickpea accessions were widely varied in plant height, the number of pods per plant, plant dry weight, 100-grain weight, grain yield, and harvest index. Grain yield was positively correlated with the number of pods per plant (r = 0.39*), pod fertility percentage (r = 0.42*), dry weight per plant (r = 0.88*), and harvest index (r = 0.30*). The highest value for the Shannon-Weaver diversity index was observed in growth habit (0.98) and leaf color (0.88). The first and second components of the principal component analysis (PCA) explained 17.97% and 16.20% of the total variations, respectively. The cluster analysis results revealed that the accessions with higher pod, leaflet, and peduncle length were grouped in cluster I, whereas cluster II indicated the dominant contribution for the number of pods per plant, plant dry weight, and grain yield. The highest phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) were observed for grain yield per plant (44.3% and 48.3%), the number of pods per plant (44.3% and 45.1%), and dry weight per plant (44.4% and 44.8%). The heritability estimates were also more significant for the number of pods per plant, plant dry weight, and harvest index. These accessions might be used in the chickpea breeding programs to expand high-yielding Kabuli-type cultivars with a broad genetic base.