Nature of Yield Components in Chickpea

Yield the ultimate goal of a any breeding program, is very complex character, which is affected by many genetic as well as environmental factors. Hence the breeders need some index character in order to design the selection strategy for indirect selection towards higher yield. Estimation of the heritability along with genotypic and phenotypic variances as well as coefficient of variation provide information on the extent of variability. The path co-efficient analysis helps to determine the direct contribution of these characters and their indirect contribution via other characters. However, the information on the nature and extent of genetic variability present in a population for desirable character, their association and relative contribution to yield comprise the basic requirement of selection desirable genotypes. The discriminant function provides an efficient method for simultaneous selection. Thus construction of selection indices will be very helpful to differentiate desirable genotypes. Therefore, the available information from this book will be helpful for an efficient selection criterion in selecting the most desirable and high yielding genotype of chickpea.