Early maturing chickpea, with improved fusarium wilt resistance,
high yield potential and good seed quality, has greatly increased
crop area and productivity in short-season environments
Early Maturing Chickpea
Aug 2012
Overview
Chickpea is currently grown on ~12
million ha in >50 countries under a wide
range of environments and cropping
systems.
In about two-thirds of chickpea growing
areas, the crop growing season is short
(90-120 days) because of terminal
drought or heat stresses.
Early maturity in chickpea helps the
crop in escaping terminal drought and
heat stresses.
The innovation
v Diverse sources for earliness identified
from the germplasm, and genetics of time
to flowering established
v Bi-parental and multi-parental crosses
used to develop desired segregating
populations
v Time to flowering was used as selection
criterion as it can be recorded with high
precision and is a good indicator of
subsequent phenological traits (time to
podding and maturity)
v Several early (90-100 days) to extra early (85-90 days) cultivars
developed both in desi (brown-seeded) and kabuli (white-seeded)
types
v Super-early (75-80 days) breeding lines were also developed by
combining earliness genes from two parents.
The impact
v Early maturing cultivars avoid terminal drought and heat stress.
v Adoption of early-maturing chickpea cultivars has led to an increase in
area and productivity in short-season environments such as Myanmar
and Andhra Pradesh state of India.
v There has been >2-fold increase in both area (129,000 to 282,000
ha) and productivity (651 to 1411 kg ha-1
), and a 4.7-fold increase in
production (84,000 to 398,000 tons) of chickpea in Myanmar during
2000-09. Four early-maturing chickpea cultivars (Yezin 3, 4, 5 and 6)
developed from the breeding material supplied by ICRISAT covered
over 80% of the total chickpea area of that country.
v The adoption of early-maturing chickpea cultivars has brought a
chickpea revolution in Andhra Pradesh (AP) state in India.
v In AP, chickpea production increased 9-fold (95,000 to 884,000 tons)
during 2000–09 as a result of a 5-fold increase in area (102,000 to
602,000 ha) and a 2.4-fold increase in yield levels (583 to 1407 kg ha-1
).
v Over 80% of the chickpea area in Andhra Pradesh is now cultivated
with the short-duration improved varieties JG 11 and KAK 2, which
were developed through a partnership between ICRISAT and the
Indian national agricultural research system.
v Andhra Pradesh was once considered
to be a low yielding state for chickpea
because of its warm, short-season
environment, but it now has the highest
yield levels in India.
Partners
Institutes supported by Indian Council
of Agricultural Research (ICAR), State
Agricultural Universities and National
and State Seed Corporations in
India; and Department of Agricultural
Research (DAR) and Myanmar
Agriculture Service (MAS) in Myanmar.
Chickpea is an important pulse crop in
semi-arid Africa and Asia.
Extra-early kabuli variety Yezin 3 (ICCV 2) in
Myanmar.
Chickpea variety JG 11 (right) and a new
super early line.
Early maturing chickpea varieties (earliest on the left) are climate ready
as they escape terminal drought and heat stresses.
Principal scientist PM Gaur (left) in a field of early chickpea (ICCV 2)
in Tanzania.
Bountiful chickpea harvests spell much
improved livelihoods for farmers.
Chickpea production in Andhra Pradesh
increased 9-fold in nine years.
Roasting green chickpea for a tasty snack.