Chickpea is one of the most important grain legumes cultivated in Southern Asia, Mediterranean countries, northern Africa, Central and South America. However, its genetic yield potential is not satisfactory due to poor plant type and biotic and abiotic stresses faced by this crop. This problem can be solved to a great extent by proper utilization of genetic variability in land races and wild spedes available in germplasm collections which have not been fully exploited by breeders. To this end, an extensive breeding program has been carried out at Indian Agricultural Research Institute for the last two decades to increase the productivity of chickpea by developing high yielding and disease resistant cultivars suitable for different agro-climatic conditions and farming systems of India. Also, we utilized available genetic resources for germplasm enhancement to develop genetic stocks with a high degree of expression for spedfic desirable traits, even those that may not be promising in terms of yield. These lines may be used as donor parents in breeding programs for transferring desirable traits into high yielding or good agronomic bases by chickpea breeders. In the high-yield program, we have developed 16 varieties of chickpea since l980 for different agro-climatic zones and farming systems of India. In the germplasm enhancement program, we have developed 30 genotypes with distinct desirable traits.

English

0309|AGRIS 0301|AL-Maize Program

Juan Carlos Mendieta

CIMMYT Publications Collection