Inheritance of drought tolerance in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) using joint scaling test

In order to study the inheritance and genetic analysis of drought tolerance indicators a six generations of F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 of the cross Hashem cultivar × ICCV96029 were studied using generation mean analysis. Genetic variation was found for grain yield, biological yield, No. of pod/plant, No. of seed/plant, earliness and proline content. High heterosis was observed in the F1 hybrid for grain yield, biological yield, harvest index, No. of pod/plant and No. of seed/plant. Genetic analysis indicated dominance in the inheritance of grain yield, biological yield, harvest index, seed weight and No. of seed/plant, while over dominance gene action in the No. of pod/plant, earliness and proline content. Moderate narrow-sense heritability estimates were observed for biological yield, harvest index, seed weight, No. of seed/plant and proline content. Moderate genetic advance for grain yield and proline content indicated that direct and indirect selection through correlated response could be effective. The joint scaling test revealed additive × dominance=[j] for grain yield, biological yield and proline content, while duplicate epistasis (additive × dominance=[j] and dominance × dominance=[1]) were shown for No. of pod/plant and No. of seed/pod. Since several important characters are influenced by dominance and non-allelic gene interaction, it is advisable to delay selection to later generation with increased homozygosity. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information.