Chickpea: Role and responses under abiotic and biotic stress - Legumes Under Environmental Stress: Yield, Improvement and Adaptations - page 70

Chickpea is considered drought tolerant as it is grown
in semi-arid regions, and many cultivars with different
levels of tolerance to drought have been bred. Chickpea
was found to be superior to pea for dryland crop pro-
duction in semi-arid climates due to an adaptive root
distribution (Benjamin & Nielsen, 2006). Under drought
stress, dry matter yield in faba bean, pea and chickpea
was reduced by 36.4, 23.9 and 14.5%, respectively
(Amede et al., 2003).
Indian varieties especially are adapted to drought and
high temperature stress, making them ideal for the
study of the molecular mechanisms of drought toler-
ance (Boominathan et al., 2004). ICRISAT has released a
kabuli chickpea genotype ICCV 2, and this variety has
proved successful due to its drought resistance mecha-
nism. In chickpea, ICC 8261 and FLIP 87-59C are the
most popular drought-tolerant germplasm lines (Saxena
et al., 2002; Singh et al., 1997). Another germplasm
accession, ICC 4958 (desi), has also been identified as
one of the best genotypes with a highly desirable root
system (Kashiwagi et al., 2005). This genotype is used to
develop drought-tolerant varieties by incorporating the
trait of an extensive and deep root system into a well-
adapted genetic background (Kashiwagi et al., 2007).
KAK 2 and JGK 1 are already released kabuli cultivars
that are drought tolerant (Kashiwagi et al., 2007).
Tolerance to cold stress is acquired only after a period
of cold acclimation (Mahajan & Tuteja, 2005; Apostolova
et al., 2008). This process involves the removal of the
limitations that normally occur when plants grown at
higher temperatures are suddenly exposed to cold stress.
Although adapted to dry areas of the Middle East,
chickpea has been grown worldwide.
In chickpea, mean daily temperatures below 15 °C
lead to flower and pod abortion in some parts of India
and Australia (Savithri et al., 1980; Srinivasan et al.,
1999; Clarke et al., 2004). When it is sown in autumn or
early spring chickpea encounters chilling stress at the
reproductive stage (Clarke et al., 2008), while it faces
freezing stress at the vegetative stage (Materne et al.,
2007; Toker et al., 2007; Saeed et al., 2010; Toker &
Yadav, 2010). Winter hardiness of chickpea is less than
that of lentil and faba bean (Murray et al., 1988).
Malhotra and Singh (1991) reported that cold toler-
ance at the vegetative stage is controlled by at least five
genes in chickpea with both additive and non-additive
gene effects, and was dominant over susceptibility. They
suggested that selection for cold tolerance would be

more effective if dominance and epistatic effects were
reduced after selfing generations (Toker & Mutlu, 2011).
Clarke et al. (2008) underlined that there were no pub-
lished data on the genetics of tolerance to chilling at the
reproductive stage in chickpea, despite the fact that
molecular markers were linked to chilling tolerance and
susceptibility in some varieties. Nevertheless, these
markers are absent from marker-assisted selection
(MAS) in other chilling-tolerant chickpea (Clarke et al.,
2008; Toker & Mutlu 2011).
The advantage of winter sowing of chickpea over tra-
ditional spring sowing is the increase in yield, greater
water use efficiency and better moisture conditions
(Millan et al., 2006; Heidarvand et al., 2011). And the
disadvantage of winter sowing is the risk of winter
killing due to cold stress. To expand the range of poten-
tial winter sowing of chickpea we have to use both
conventional and molecular breeding techniques to
obtain improved cold tolerance. The best sources for
cold tolerance in chickpea are ILC 8262 (Singh et al.,
1992) and ILC 8617 (Singh et al., 1997) with rosette-
type and dark-green leaves in the seedling stage, plus
late flowering. Clarke et al. (2004) developed two chill-
ing-tolerant genotypes, 'Rupali' and 'Sonali'. The
cold-tolerant chickpea varieties developed by ICRISAT
are ICCV 88502, ICCV 88503, ICCV 88506, ICCV 88510,
ICCV 88516 and ICC 8923. These varieties can set pods
at low temperatures and restrict plant growth, thus
giving higher yields than conventional cultivars, which
fail to set pods at similar temperatures.
Singh et al. (1989) proposed a screening and selection
technique for cold tolerance in chickpea, which in turn
has been combined with screening for resistance to
ascochyta blight. The technique involves: (i) early sow-
ing (in October) of test materials; (ii) using at least one
known cold-susceptible (ILC 533) and cold-tolerant
accession (ILC 8617 is cold tolerant and ascochyta blight
resistant); (iii) using at least one known ascochyta
blight-susceptible but cold-tolerant accession (ILC
8262); (iv) inoculation with ascochyta-infected crop
debris prior to flowering and ensuring proper moisture
provision; and (v) evaluating the test materials for resis-
tance to ascochyta blight and tolerance to cold using a
visual scale scored from 1 to 9 (Toker & Canci, 2003;
Toker et al., 2007; Toker & Mutlu, 2011). This technique
can be useful for a large number of test materials and
could easily be adopted for cold and chilling tolerance in
other food legumes (Toker & Mutlu, 2011).