EVALUATION OF CHICKPEA COLLECTION VARIETIES FOR VALUABLE TRAITS USING CLUSTER ANALYSIS AND AND MOLECULAR MARKERS

Chickpea, germplasm collection, productivity, cluster, drought tolerance, yield.

Abstract

The biodiversity preservation of cultivated crops represents the important task in modern agriculture. Analysis of meteorological data in the experimental region indicates for frequent occurance of drought. Therefore, chickpea plants can be grown in the region making this crop valuable for seed production locally and for export. Chickpea varieties with large seeds, low height to the first pods and high tolerance to drought stress are in demand. New and better adapted cultivars of chickpea are required based on the rising interest of commercial agricultural farmers. Currently, in the state register of the Republic of Kazakhstan there are 12 varieties of chickpea, zoned in different regions of the country. And only 3 varieties are zoned in the Akmola region. To expand the genetic diversity of chickpea, germplasm collection with various ecological and geographical origin is strongly required for further breeding program. The agricultural strategy deals with the production of new competitive chickpea breeding lines, and their introduction in agriculture can manage for the reduction of the protein deficiency in animal feed and in human nutrition. The main method for the initial germplasm evaluation and selection will produce new breeding lines via intraspecific hybridization. Parents were selected from the diverse ecological and geographic checkpea germplasms with potential transferring of genes involved in stress tolerance. This paper presents the results of structural analysis data in chickpea germplasm collection using phenotypic and molecular screening. The genetic resources of chickpea with important economical traits were identified. The aim of this research was to study of chickpea germplasm collection to identify and evaluate the most valuable and important genotypes for further production of new varieties adapted to environment of Northern Kazakhstan.