Phenotypic and Quality Traits of Chickpea Genotypes under Rainfed Conditions in South Italy

Mohamed Houssemeddine Sellami,Antonella Lavini,Cataldo Pulvento

doi:10.3390/agronomy11050962

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important cool-season food legume crop that is mainly cultivated as a rainfed crop. This study was conducted in Italy between 2017 and 2019 to evaluate the stability of seed yield (SY), biomass (AGB) and 1000 seed weight (THS), and to assess the seed quality of 12 kabuli chickpea accessions under field conditions. The likelihood-ratio test revealed significant effects of genotype only for the SY and THS. The environment and genotype × environment interaction (GEI) effects were highly significant for all variables. We found that the environment (year) and GEI explain 55.72% and 20.87% of the total seed yield variation, respectively. Most chickpea accessions showed sensitivity to frost conditions in the third growing season. No relationship was observed between the yield and the protein content in Kabuli chickpea. Among the accessions, Ares and Reale showed the best performance under all environmental conditions, and the Reale was the most stable chickpea.

Highlights

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an annual plant that belongs to the leguminous family, comprising a variety of beans, grass pea, soybeans, and lentils
The weather regimes during the three experimental seasons are shown in Figure 1 in terms of the maximum (Tmax) and minimum (Tmin) air temperature, solar radiation, and rainfall
The climatic trend was different from the serial data (1976–2019) reference trend, especially in the case of the volume and distribution of rainfall

Summary

Introduction

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an annual plant that belongs to the leguminous family, comprising a variety of beans, grass pea, soybeans, and lentils. Chickpea is native to the Mediterranean region and the Middle East [1]. It is a legume widely grown for its nutritious seeds. A subplot of 1 m2 in the middle of each plot was manually harvested and the total yield (SY), the 1000 seed weight (THS), and the above-ground biomass (AGB) were determined. Seed samples (200 g) from the subplots harvested in 2017 were chemically analyzed through hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). 2 g of the sample was briefly subjected to digestion at 450 ◦ C The digested substance was alkalinized with 45% NaOH and subjected to steam distillation with the help of a distiller

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion