Protein content exhibits a significant positive correlation with seed weight in chickpea germplasm collection

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important food legume crop grown mostly in Asia and Africa as well as in other parts of the world, and serves as an important source of protein in the diets of vegetarian people. Lot of variation in grain quality traits has been observed in cultivated chickpea in both desi and Kabuli types. It has often been observed that seeds with smaller size have more protein when compared with those with larger size. The joint dependence of these two traits on the same primary characteristics results in this negative relationship. This negative correlation coupled with breeding efforts aimed at increasing grain yield has hampered the progress of improving these two traits simultaneously. Therefore, a germplasm exhibiting wider variability for these quantitative traits is an important resource for the identification of novel alleles. Herein, we report the wide variation observed for five important quantitative traits including days to flowering, days to maturity, plant height, 100-seed weight and protein content, and also report the significant positive correlation observed between 100-seed weight and protein content in a diverse collection of chickpea germplasm comprising both desi and Kabuli types.