Analyzing Drought Tolerance in Indian Chickpea Varieties | InformativeBD

Bhupendra Koul , Devindra Vijay Amla , Indraneel Sanyal , and Ruchi Singh, from the different institute of the India. wrote a research article about, Analyzing Drought Tolerance in Indian Chickpea Varieties. entitled, Analysis of response to water deficit in three Indian varieties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) for drought tolerance. This research paper published by the International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research (IJAAR). an open access scholarly research journal on Agronomy. under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences | NNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.

Abstract

Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses in agriculture for losses in crop productivity worldwide. Three chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) varieties namely P362, P1103 and SBD377 were assessed for response to drought tolerance during vegetative stage, in stress and non-stress environments, under contained conditions. Several physiological parameters including gas exchange, photosynthesis rate, fluorescence, stomatal conductance and water loss per day were monitored simultaneously. P362 variety showed maximum photosynthesis rate in irrigated as well as in drought conditions. This variety also maintained its relative water content (RWC) and water potential (WP) during imposition of similar duration of drought. Due to the maximum elasticity of leaf cells, it maintained its cell turgidity upto 68% RWC to protect itself from water stress, compared to variety P1103 and SBD377. The effective solute concentration and osmotic potential in the irrigated controls at full turgor was lowest in P362 variety, compared to the other two varieties. Osmotic adjustment (OA) was assessed as a capacity factor which is rate of change in turgor pressure with RWC. P362 variety showed a maximum OA value of 0.27 while the values for SBD377 and P1103 were 0.22 and 0.21, respectively. During water stress, the chlorophyll content was minimally reduced in P362 variety, therefore effective quantum yield of photosystem II (Fv/Fm) and photosynthesis rate was maximally maintained. The higher photosynthesis rate under irrigated conditions and maintenance of higher RWC under drought conditions makes P362 variety a promising option for optimum yield under prolonged terminal drought or under rain-fed conditions.

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Introduction

The land plants have been coping with water stress, ever since they left the seas and colonized the dry land (Thomas 1997). As time passed by, progressive anthropogenic activities of the modern era has made the weather more unpredictable and crop plants dependent on rainwater are still facing the vagaries of the ever changing weather conditions. Because, land plants experience constant fluctuations in the availability of water, they have evolved adaptive features to search for and absorb water through their root systems, to prevent excessive transpirational water loss and to adjust their physiology and biochemistry for survival and sustainable growth and (Zhang et al., 1996; Zhu et al., 1997).

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an ancient legume crop believed to have originated in South Eastern Turkey and adjoining parts of Syria (Singh 1997). It is the second most important pulse crop of the world and covers 15% of the cultivated area thus, contributing to 14% (7.9 million tonnes) of the world’s total pulses productivity of 58 million tonnes. India is the largest producer of chickpea in the world but the yield has been stagnating for last two decades primarily due to abiotic and biotic stresses and relatively slow progress in its genetic improvement (Dita et al., 2006; FAO 2012).

Chickpea plays a significant role in the nutrition of both rural and the urban population in the developing world. Improving its adaptation to drought including terminal drought is critical for sustained grain yield under rain-fed cultivation. From an estimated 3.7 million tonnes annual loss in chickpea through water deficit in semi-arid regions, about 2.1 million tonnes could be recovered by crop improvement efforts (Bhatnagar-Mathur et al., 2009). However, the multigenic and quantitative nature of drought tolerance makes it difficult to increase abiotic stress tolerance using conventional plant breeding methods and availability of genotypes tolerant to drought (Singh et al., 2012). Unfortunately, cultivated chickpea has high morphological but narrow genetic diversity and understanding the genetic processes of this plant is hindered by the fact that its genome has not yet been annotated for adequate EST and SNP resources (Varshney et al., 2013; Jain et al., 2013). Although, chickpea is considered as drought-tolerant cool-season food legume but terminal drought still limits chickpea production and grain yield. Due to terminal drought seed yield can be reduced by 58−95% compared to irrigated plants with reduction in pod production per plant and abortion are the chief factors affecting the overall grain yield (Behboudian et al., 2001; Leport et al., 2006).

In chickpea, a deep root system, osmotic adjustment, high leaf water potential, early flowering and maturity, high biomass, and apparent redistribution of stem and leaf dry matter during pod filling are associated with drought tolerance (Morgan et al., 1991; Subbarao et al., 1995; Leport et al., 2006). The requirement of water during flowering, pod development and seed filling stages is crucial for the productivity of chickpea plant. The influence of drought on yield of chickpea has been documented, but extensive research on the physiological responses of water stress on chickpea is limited (Sheldrake and Saxena 1973; Turner and Begg 1981). Leaf water potential is a good indicator of plant water stress and correlates well with different plant functions and crop productivity in legumes (Sojka and Parsons 1983; Phogat et al., 1984)

Three chickpea varieties P362, P1103 and SBD377 were grown for the assessment of drought stress response under water deficit and non-stress environments. Various physiological parameters like plant water loss per day, plant height, total photosynthesis area, relative water content, plant water potential, gas exchange, fluorescence and wet sensor reading of soil parameters were assessed. Based on these physiological parameters, the best responding variety to drought stress environment was determined during the course of the study, which can be incorporated in chickpea breeding programmes for the introgression of drought tolerance trait in other high yielding but drought sensitive varieties for cultivation in rain fed areas and genetic improvement of chickpea for drought tolerance.

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