Evaluation of Genotype × Environment Interaction in Chickpea Genotypes Using Path Analysis

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important crops worldwide that is a subject of many plant breeding programs in many countries. In addition, climates are changing all over the world and drought becomes one of the most serious problems versus yield of crops. In order to screen drought tolerant genotype in Chickpea, twenty genotypes were tested under rainfed and irrigated conditions in the experimental field of College of Agriculture, Razi university, Kermanshah, Iran during 2008- 2011 growing seasons. Descriptive diagrams of hundred seed weight (HSW), number of pod per plant (NPPL), number of seed per pod (NSPO) and grain yield (GY) exhibited high GE interaction and variability between the investigated characters indicating possible selection of drought tolerant and stable entries. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences (P<0.01) between the genotypes and environments exhibiting genotypic diversity and variability between genotypes and environments. GE interaction was highly significant for HSW and NPPL but non-significant for GY and NSPO. Based on mean comparisons of GY, HSW, NPPL and NSPO, 2, 7, 8 and 3 classes of genotypes were found, respectively. The results extracted from path analysis over environments showed the contributions of NSPO (=0.82), HSW (=0.54) and NPPL (=0.12) on adaptability of grain yield, therefore the most contribution was attributed to number of seed per pod in the phenotypic stability of grain yield