Identification and molecular mapping of QTLs for herbicide tolerance in chickpea Cicer arietinum L

Abstract

Competition with weeds is a major constraint to chickpea production, exacerbated by limited herbicide control options. Because of the sensitivity of chickpea to herbicides choices for post-emergence herbicides are limited. Imazethapyr, an imidazolinone compound, is used as selective herbicide to control most annual grasses and certain broad leaf weeds. Identifying quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for herbicide tolerance may facilitate breeding for improved herbicide tolerance in chickpea. An essential pre-requisite for such understanding is the development of standardised method for phenotypic classification of data and for this, preliminary experiments were conducted, which revealed that 3.5 mL/L dose level of imazethapyr was the optimised dose for screening of the ICC 14077 (susceptible parent) × ICCV 10 (tolerant parent) derived mapping population. A set of 188 F8 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was evaluated under field conditions to assess the genetic variability, to study the relationships of herbicide tolerance with grain yield and associated traits and identification of QTLs associated with herbicide tolerance in chickpea. newline