Studies of Genetic Variability, Heritability and Genetic Advance in Yield Component Traits in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Twenty diverse genotypes of chickpea including three checks viz., GNG 158, GNG 1488, PNG 469- checks, were carried out under Agriculture Research farm, Department of Genetics of Plant Breeding, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara (Punjab). This experiment was conducted in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications, during rabi 2021-2022. To estimate genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance percent of the mean. analysis of variance for the design of experiments has been present for all the twelve traits The analysis of variance estimation demonstrated that the mean sum of squares attributed to genotypes were significant for all of the characters, suggesting that there was enough genetic diversity among the genotypes. The current study found that the Phenotypic Coefficient of Variation (PCV) was greater than the corresponding Genotypic Coefficient of Variation (GCV) for all traits, which could be attributed to genotype-environment interaction to some degree or another, explaining environmental factors influencing the expression of these characters. In the present study, moderate PCV, GCV were observed in No. of secondary branches per plant, 100 seed weight, No. of primary branches per plant, Harvest index, biological yield per plant, No. of pods per plant, Plant height and Seed yield per plant. Low value of PCV and GCV were recorded in No. of seeds per pod, protein content, Days to maturity and Days to 50% flowering, shows the magnitude of PCV and GCV were low and indicating limited scope for improvement. The genotypic correlation coefficient was higher in magnitude than their corresponding phenotypic one, indicating there by strong inherent association between different traits studied. The phenotypic expression of correlation was less due to multiple influences of environmental components in the view of correspondence selection on phenotypic basis would be effective.