saral, new chickpea variety to expand autumn sowing in highland cold areas of iran

selecting and introducing of cold tolerant chickpea varieties with high yielding potential as well as suitable to autumn sowing has highly importance. sel93th24460 is hybrid of a cross, ilc 3470 × ilc 8617 which has done at international center for agricultural research in the dry areas (icarda). this genotype has been sent to iran in an international cold tolerance nursery in 1999 and evaluated in different trials including international, national, advanced and adaptability yield trials and disease screening as well as on-farm examinations at autumn planting of cold areas during 2000 to 2010. according to the results, saral (sel93th24460) with mean yield of 1.4 tons/hectare had increased performance rather than to the check varieties, jam, arman and ilc 482 by 15, 34 and 10 percent, respectively, and fairly tolerated -16°c at farm conditions. at controlled conditions of cold room, the mentioned line had considerable tolerance to below zero temperatures and its superiority has confirmed at on-farm trials. regards to these results and protein assay trial; saral has been released as a fall sowing variety for cold dry land regions.