response of yield and morphophysiological characteristics of earliness chickpea genotypes (cicer arietinum l.) under drought stress

earliness and drought escape are as a primary strategy for plant adaptation in regions that plants are subjected to terminal drought stress. plants react to drought through morphological changes and alteration in physiological behavior. accordingly, two separate experiments to assess the response of yield and morphophysiological characteristics of earliness chickpea genotypes to drought stress were carried out. in the field experiment, days to flowering and yield of 30 earliness chickpea genotypes with drought tolerant genotypes were evaluated in drought stress (rain fed) and non stress (irrigated) conditions as a split plot design with three replications, during 2007-8. in the second experiment, five candidate’s chickpea genotypes with commercially jam cultivars in stress conditions (25 percent field capacity) and control (field capacity) were studied in a factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design with three replications. results showed that days to flowering is mainly controlled genetically and the effect of environmental factors, especially soil moisture condition was negligible. wide range of yield reduction due to drought stress (23 to 86 percent) approved a high variation among the genotypes in response to drought stress. in stress environment, significant and negative correlation between days to flowering and seed yield, confirmed drought escape strategy in early flowering genotypes. mcc80, mcc392, mcc78, mcc552 and mcc537 genotypes produced high yield in stress and non stress environments. also, the stress tolerance index in these genotypes was higher than that of average genotypes studied, therefore mentioned genotypes are suggested as drought tolerant genotypes. it seems that in the screened genotypes in this experiment due to their nature of earliness and drought escape strategy, the tolerance mechanisms to drought stress have not been created or not fully evolved. therfore there weren’t significant differences among screened earliness genotypes and control in respect to most traits for drought tolerance.