Heritability and gene effects for yield and yield components in chickpea

A 4x4 full-diallel cross set of chickpea (ILC 3279, Konya, Balikesir and Aknohut) was studied to estimate the gene effects and genetic parameters of nine traits. According to Hayman's method, only additive gene effects were found significant for days to flowering, plant height, number of pods and seeds per plant. In additon to the significant additive gene effects, dominant gene effects were significant for days to maturity, basal pod height, number of branches per plant and 100-seed weight. However, the magnitude of the additive gene effects was much higher than dominant gene effects. Reciprocal differences were observed for days to flowering and 100-seed weight. Estimates of genetic parameters also revealed that additive variance was significant for all traits studied except for seed yield, while dominance variance was significant only for days to maturity. The narrow-sense heritabilities were high for 100-seed weight (96%), days to flowering (84%), seeds (78%) and pods per plant (74%) indicating that great genetic gain could be achieved for these traits.