Influence of different planting dates on duration of phenophages and yield and yield component of different chickpea genotypes

The planting of chickpea is usually delayed in north-western parts of India due to popularization of rice-wheat cropping system. This causes high temperature during flowering and seed formation phase. In the present study, an effort was made to study the effect of high temperature stress on different phenophages, yield and its attributes in twenty different chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes. These genotypes were sown under three different planting dates (23rd Oct., 21st Nov., 18th Dec.). Results revealed that north zone genotypes comparatively required less accumulated heat units as compare to other zonal varieties. It means genotypes from this zone are early maturing and have higher yield because of better utilization of accumulated heat units. The yield and its components, viz. number of pods plant-¹, number of seeds per pod, biological yield, seed yield per plant and harvest index were higher in 21st Nov. sown genotypes as compared to 23rd Oct. and 18th Dec. planting dates. Correlation studies showed significant positive association of seed yield with number of seed per pod (r=0.419), 100 seed weight (r=0.815) and biological yield per plant (r=0.763) respectively. It is inferred that Pusa-1103, BGD-72, KWR-108 and Pant-G 186 genotypes have better yielded under high temperature conditions due to higher chlorophyll contents. These genotypes could be used as good breeding material for developing temperature tolerant genotypes.