GENETIC VARIABILITY AND ASSOCIATION AMONG YIELD AND YIELD RELATED TRAITS IN KABULI CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.) GENOTYPES AT GORO AND GINNER, SOUTHEAST ETHIOPIA

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is among the major pulse crops in Ethiopia. Despite of its importance the national productivity is low as compared to the potential of chickpea. As first step for the improvement of the crop, this study was conducted to assess the genetic variability and to estimate the association of traits, and determine the direct and indirect effects of yield related traits on yield of kabuli chickpea genotypes. Twenty five chickpea genotypes were evaluated in 5 x 5 simple lattice design at Goro and Ginner in 2018. The analysis of variance computed for 14 traits for each location and over locations revealed the presence of significant variability among genotypes. Location and interaction of genotype x location also had significant effect on the performance of genotypes for most of the traits. Moreover, the genotypes showed wider variation for grain yield in the range between 1486 and 3442.10 kg/ha. Phenotypic (PCV) and genotypic (GCV) coefficient of variations ranged from 0.15 to 86.38% and 0.17 to 111.8%, respectively. Heritability (H2 ) in broad sense and genetic advance as percent of mean (GAM) ranged from 48 to 97.26 and 0.67 to 60.70%, respectively. The estimates of GCV and PCV, H2 and GAM were high for plant height up to first poding node, number of pod per plant, number of seed per plant, thousand seed weight, Seed production efficiency, grain yield per day and grain yield over two locations. Grain yield had positive and significant correlations with number of primary branches, number of secondary branches, number of pod per plant, seed production efficiency, and grain yield per day at genotypic and phenotypic levels at two locations. Grain yield had positive and significant phenotypic correlations with number of seed per plant at Ginner. Of which seed production efficiency, number of secondary branches and grain yield per day had positive direct effect on yield at genotypic and phenotypic levels at both locations. In addition, number of seed per plant had positive direct effect on yield at phenotypic level while days to maturity, grain filling period and number of primary branch exerted negative direct effect on grain yield at genotypic and phenotypic levels at both locations though it had negative and significant association with yield. The first three principal component axes (PCA) with Eigen values >1 accounted for 83.88% variation of genotypes. The mean genetic distance of genotypes estimated using Euclidean distance ranged from 2.42 to 9.23 with 4.90, 1.69 and 27.29%, of mean genetic distance, standard deviation and coefficient of variation, respectively. The genotypes were grouped into six distinct clusters of which Cluster I, II and III consisted of 9 (36%), 5 (20%) and 8 (32%) genotypes, respectively, and the other three were solitary clusters. Generally the result of this research showed the presence of variations among kabuli chickpea genotypes for yield that could be potentially exploited in future breeding programs