Vegetos

Abstract

Throughout the world salt affected soils are increasing every year. Generally legumes are sensitive to soil salinity and chickpea is not an exception to it. The present study was conduct-ed to assess the genetic variability for yield and its attributes in chickpea under saline soil. The study also included a preliminary investigation on sensitivity of vegetative phase as measured by biomass accumulation in pot experiment and influence of salinity on pollen germination in vitro. There was a wide variation among the chickpea genotypes for soil salinity tolerance. The average yield reduction of test entries was to the tune of 66% and 84% under ECe 2.5 dSm⁻¹ and ECe 3.00 dSm⁻¹ salinity, respectively. The salt tolerant genotypes suitable for short duration environment were identified. The genotypes LBeG 7, JG 11 and ICC 92944 were found to be tolerant with minimum reduction in grain yield under saline conditions. The yield reduction un-der salinity stress is mainly attributed to the re-duction in pod and seed number. The results of the pot experiment indicated the sensitivity of vegetative phase of chickpea to saline condition and existence of genotypic differences for bio-mass accumulation under the salinity. In vitro pollen germination studies showed sensitivity of pollen germination to salt stress but did not lin-eate between salt tolerant and susceptible geno-types.