ABSTRACT

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the second most important grain legume in the world. The increased productivity of chickpea in developed countries is mainly attributed to the mechanical harvesting. This study aimed to evaluate 45 advanced breeding lines with five suitable checks for the traits suitable for mechanical harvesting. The experiment was laid during Rabi 2023-24, at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Vijayapura in randomised complete block design with two replications. The results showed significant variability and heritability for all the ten traits related to yield and mechanical harvesting. Majority of the traits showed moderate GCV and PCV values. Except days to 50 % flowering, days to maturity and hundred seed weight, all other characters showed high heritability coupled with high genetic advance over mean, indicating that simple selection could be effective for improving these characters. Correlation studies, direct and indirect effects revealed that number of secondary branches and number of pods per plant had substantial positive effect on yield.Mahalanobis D2 statistical analysis grouped the 50 genotypes into nine clusters. Cluster VII with single genotype IPC 2020-84, had high plant height, height to first podding, number of secondary branches and seed yield per plot. Cluster VI included genotypes with early flowering and maturity, while Cluster III had genotypes with minimal angle of primary branches. Cluster V with genotype VCMH 21-10, was noted for high test weight. Clusters VII, VIII, IX, and VI were the most diverse and genotypes in these clusters could be useful for future breeding programs. Out of 45 advanced breeding lines evaluated in this study, six lines exhibited high yield with traits suitable for mechanical harvesting which includes VCMH 21-11, IPC 2020-84, VCMH 21-09, ICRISAT F6 21-13, NBeG 47 × JG 14 (ICRISAT F5-02) and ICCV211115.