Assessment of polygenic character’s association with yield in chickpea genotypes

Chickpea is one of the important pulse crop in Asia with special concern to India. Productivity of chickpea is low as compared to wheat in India. For this concern, the analysis of the relationships among yield attributing characters and their associations with seed yield is essential to establish selection criteria. The experimental material used in the present study comprised of forty genotypes including standard checks. The characters viz., 100-seed weight, biological yield per plant, harvest index, number of pods per plant and number of seeds per plant recorded positive correlation coefficient with seed yield both at genotypic and phenotypic level. Path coefficient analysis revealed a higher and positive direct effect viz., number of seeds per plant, lowest branch height, number of primary branches per plant, harvest index and number of seeds per pod on seed yield per plant.The result obtained from genotypic correlation coefficients and path analysis indicated that the characters namely; number of seeds per plant and harvest index exhibited strong positive correlation coefficient and high magnitude of positive direct effects on seed yield. Hence, it is suggested that while exercising selection index due weightage should be given to number of seeds per plant and harvest index as these were important components influencing seed yield of chickpea.