Phenotypic Characterization and Assessment of Genetic Diversity for Agro-Morphological Traits of Ethiopian Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) landraces

Year 2019, Volume: 2 Issue: 3, 146 - 155, 01.07.2019

Awol Adem , Bulti Tesso

Abstract

Ethiopia has a large number of Desi type chickpea landraces. However, limited information is available about the
landraces character. This experiment was conducted in 2016 at Sirinka and Jari, under rainfed condition to characterize
and assess genetic diversity among the Ethiopian chickpea landraces. Two hundred two new germplasm accessions
were grown in an alpha lattice design with three replications. Data on 16 traits were collected and analyzed. Differences
among the genotypes were highly significant (p<0.01).The genotypes were grouped into five clusters with different
sizes. Genetic distances among the clusters were significant. The highest diversity indices pooled over characters within
zones were recorded for accessions from South West Shewa (H= 2.03 ± 0.05) followed by Gurage (H=0.81 ± 0.08), West
Shewa (H=0.73 ± 0.04) and North Gonder (H= 0.72 ± 0.05). The existence of wider morpho-agronomic diversity among
the chickpea collections implies the potential to improve the crop and the need to conserve the diversity. Future
collecting operations of chickpea germplasm should strategically focus on areas with relatively large variation. From
genetic conservation point of view, it appears that South West Shewa, Gurage, West Shewa and North Gonder, could be
suitable as in situ conservation sites. 

Keywords

Landraces, Morpho-Agronomic, Diversity, Clustering

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