Abstract
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an economically important food legume grown in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Chickpea is cultivated mainly in the rainfed, residual moisture, and restricted irrigation condition. The crop is always prone to drought stress which is resulting in flower drop, unfilled pods, and is a major yield reducer in many parts of the world. The present study elucidates the association between candidate gene and morpho-physiological traits for the screening of drought tolerance in chickpea. Abiotic stress-responsive gene Dehydrin (DHN) was identified in some of the chickpea genotypes based on the sequence similarity approach to play a major role in drought tolerance. Analysis of variance revealed a significant effect of drought on relative water content, membrane stability index, plant height, and yield traits. The genotypes Pusa1103, Pusa362, and ICC4958 were found most promising genotypes for drought tolerance as they maintained the higher value of osmotic regulations and yield characters. The results were further supported by a sequence similarity approach for the dehydrin gene when analyzed for the presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and indels. Homozygous indels and single nucleotide polymorphisms were found after the sequencing in some of the selected genotypes.
Highlights
Drought is an environmental condition that arises due to the water scarcity and is a result of very low rainfall or water supply
Fifty chickpea genotypes consisting of released varieties, germplasm collections, landraces, and wild derivatives were evaluated in two replications under the normal and rainfed conditions at the experimental farm of IARI, NeDelhi (28.6377◦ N and 77.1571◦ E) with altitude 228.61 m over mean sea level) during 2015–16 and 2016–17
The results suggest that the genotypes Pusa1103 and Pusa362 having homozygous indels and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showed a significantly higher value of relative water content, membrane stability index, and yield in comparison to other genotypes
Summary
Drought is an environmental condition that arises due to the water scarcity and is a result of very low rainfall or water supply. Discovering the genotypic variation between the chickpea genotypes for drought tolerance is most important for the execution of breeding programs for chickpea (Kumar et al, 2018). Chickpea is being grown in more than fifty countries across the globe (Upadhyaya et al, 2011; Gaur et al, 2012b). It is the most important food legume crop, grown in tropical, subtropical, and Allelic Variation of Dehydrin Gene temperate regions (Mohammed et al, 2017). Chickpea is cultivated mostly in the rainfed condition (Kumar and Abbo, 2001) and drought is a major constraint for chickpea production (Toker et al, 2007)
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