Studies on genetics of cold stress tolerance and transferability of markers from related legumes to chickpea

Abstract

newline The present investigation entitled Studies on genetics of cold stress tolerance and transferability of markers from related legumes to chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) was undertaken at experimental farm of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, CSKHPKV, Palampur as well as at Mountain Agricultural Research and Extension Centre (MAREC), Sangla (off season). In the present study, the cold stress tolerant germplasm line ICC16349 was selected as a donor whereas, the cold susceptible parent GPF2 was used as recipient in hybridization. Crosses between germplasm lines ICC16349 and variety GPF2 of chickpea were attempted and resulting hybrids were screened for parental polymorphism using 51 SSR markers of which only one i.e TA180 showed parental polymorphism. Out of 80 F1 putative hybrids screened, only 34 were true hybrids. F1 generation was advanced to get F2 seed. F2 plants were phenotyped and morphological data were recorded. Days to germination, plant height and number of leaves gave good estimate of early plant vigour and data showed clear segregation of F2 plants into vigorous and non-vigorous plants. Chi-square test was applied which revealed that late flowering was governed by single dominant gene. Pod initiation followed a complex pattern of inheritance involving polygenes. Studies on transferability of SSR markers from related legumes to chickpea revealed that lentil SSR primers had highest transferability (36.36%) to chickpea followed by pea SSR primers (18.18%) and horsegram SSR primers (14.89%), respectively. Percent polymorphism was also found to be highest for lentil SSR primers (10.61%) followed by horsegram SSR primers (4.25%) and pea SSR primers (3.79%), respectively. In the present study, 62 new SSR markers were added to chickpea SSR primer pool from three legumes. The new SSR markers are expected to contribute to molecular breeding, germplasm characterization, diversity analysis, gene mapping and comparative genomic studies in chickpea.