Assessment of Variability and Identification of Transgressive Segregants for Yield and Yield Component Traits in Early Segregating Generations of Chickpea

Abstract

In order to compute the genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance an investigation was carried out with 575 plants of F 2 population and F 2 derived F 3 progenies from the cross between ICC 13124 and WR315 of chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.). The genotype ICC 13124 is tolerant to drought but susceptible to wilt, while, WR 315 is resistant to wilt and relatively less tolerant to drought. Considerably high variability was observed in 575 plants of F 2 and F 2-3 progenies . The phenotypic variance was higher than the corresponding genotypic variance for all the characters. Environmental influence was very meager in expression of most of the traits which is evident from narrow difference between Genotypic Coefficient of variation (GCV) and Phenotypic Coefficient of Variation (PCV) estimates. Heritability estimates in broad sense was high for all the characters under study in both F 2 and F 3 coupled with high genetic advance as per cent over mean indicated the presence of additive gene action for these traits. The crosses had thrown a good number of transgressive segregants over better parent for seed yield per plant. More number of transgressive segregants was found for number of seeds per plant followed by number of pods per plant and yield per plant. A track on these transgressive segregants should be maintained and forwarded to further generation till they reach nearly homozygous condition. Most promising one can be used in further breeding programme.