Abstract
Chickpea is one of the most economically important food legumes, and a significant source of proteins. It is cultivated in more than 50 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, North America, and South America. Chickpea production is limited by various abiotic stresses (cold, heat, drought, salt, etc.). Being a winter-season crop in northern south Asia and some parts of the Australia, chickpea faces low-temperature stress (0–15°C) during the reproductive stage that causes substantial loss of flowers, and thus pods, to inhibit its yield potential by 30–40%. The winter-sown chickpea in the Mediterranean, however, faces cold stress at vegetative stage. In late-sown environments, chickpea faces high-temperature stress during reproductive and pod filling stages, causing considerable yield losses. Both the low and the high temperatures reduce pollen viability, pollen germination on the stigma, and pollen tube growth resulting in poor pod set. Chickpea also experiences drought stress at various growth stages; terminal drought, along with heat stress at flowering and seed filling can reduce yields by 40–45%. In southern Australia and northern regions of south Asia, lack of chilling tolerance in cultivars delays flowering and pod set, and the crop is usually exposed to terminal drought. The incidences of temperature extremes (cold and heat) as well as inconsistent rainfall patterns are expected to increase in near future owing to climate change thereby necessitating the development of stress-tolerant and climate-resilient chickpea cultivars having region specific traits, which perform well under drought, heat, and/or low-temperature stress. Different approaches, such as genetic variability, genomic selection, molecular markers involving quantitative trait loci (QTLs), whole genome sequencing, and transcriptomics analysis have been exploited to improve chickpea production in extreme environments. Biotechnological tools have broadened our understanding of genetic basis as well as plants' responses to abiotic stresses in chickpea, and have opened opportunities to develop stress tolerant chickpea.
Highlights
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the 2nd most important legume crop after common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) (Gaur et al, 2008; Varshney et al, 2013b) and an economically beneficial protein-rich food legume
Current trends of unpredictable global climate change have resulted in periodic spells of drought stress and frequent episodes of extreme temperature, challenging plant growth and yield in several crops, including chickpea
Cicer cultigens are not adequately equipped with cold-tolerance; wild relatives C. echinospermum or C. reticulatum, the species of primary gene pool which are crossable to the cultigen, are good sources of cold tolerance
Summary
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the 2nd most important legume crop after common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) (Gaur et al, 2008; Varshney et al, 2013b) and an economically beneficial protein-rich food legume. Unpredictable climate change is the major constraint for chickpea production as it increases the frequency of drought and temperature extremes, i.e., high (> 30°C) and low (< 15°C) temperatures (Gaur et al, 2013; Kadiyala et al, 2016), which reduces grain yields considerably (Kadiyala et al, 2016). Winter/autumn-sown chickpea crops in northern south Asia and south Australia face low temperature (LT) stress at reproductive (flowering/podding) stages whereas those in Mediterranean region, especially the central Anatolia, are exposed to LT at the seedling and early vegetative stages (Berger et al, 2005; Berger et al, 2011; Berger et al, 2012). We update the research status on drought and temperature stress in chickpea, and suggest appropriate management strategies to develop stress-tolerant genotypes
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