Purpose of identification

ICCV 88503, ICCV 88506, and ICCV 88510 are cold-tolerant chickpea varieties developed by ICRISAT that can set pods at low ambient temperatures, which restrict plant growth-thus, the tolerant cultivars have higher harvest indices (HIs) than conventional cultivars, which fail to set pods at similar temperatures. (Harvest Index is a ratio of seed mass to shoot mass.) L ow temperature when the chickpeas are at the flowering and pod-set stage is a common constraint to production in subtropical South Asia, e.g., northern India and Pakistan, and also in some parts of Australia.

Origin and development

Cold-tolerant chickpea plants were identified in the F3 segregating population of a threeway cross [G130 x (ICC 8923 x Chafa)] in the 1980/81 season at ICRISAT cooperative research station, Hisar, northern India (29°N 76°E, altitude 221 m). G130 and Chafa are desi (brown-seeded) chickpea cultivars of Indian origin and ICC 8923 is of Russian origin (identity K1189). In F4 , cold-tolerant plants were selected as parents and crossed w i th two high-yielding chickpea cultivars, Gaurav and Pant G114, in 1982/83, and advanced to F2 generation in 1983/84. Cold-tolerant selections from the F3 generation were bulked. Cold tolerance was judged by the ability of plants to set pods at the first and all the subsequent nodes, once flowering was initiated at low temperatures. The F5 progenies (120 selections) w i t h a wide range of values of t wo criteria, namely days to first flowering and days to podset at low temperatures, were evaluated in a replicated t r i a l . The promising cold-tolerant progenies were compared to Pant G114 and Gaurav, the best adapted varieties of the region, which served as controls. ICCV 88506 and 88510 are derived from the cross Gaurav x [G130 x (ICC 8923 x Chafa)]