Chickpea landraces from centers of the crop origin: diversity and differences

Chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.), a grain legume crop, is considered innovative for the Russian Federation. Over the past fifteen years, its area in our country have increased 20 times and reached 420,300 hectares in 2015. The growing demand of chickpea determines the necessity of breeding new varieties. One of the ways to improve the crop could be the introgression of genes from old landraces, especially those from the regions of species genetic diversity, the centers of its origin (i.e. the primary in Turkey and the secondary in Ethiopia). In this paper the question is raised about the diversity and phenotypic differences of the chickpea gene pool growing in the centers of origin about a century ago and preserved in VIR collection. Here, we first showed the differences in the phenotypic characteristics of the oldest chickpeas from two centers of origin. Fifteen morphological, phenological and agronomic features were studied in 75 local varieties from Turkey and 24 ones from Ethiopia. Both in Turkish and in Ethiopian samples, the most variable signs were the number of seeds per plant ( Cv 62.6 and 70.4 %, respectively) and the number of beans per plant ( Cv 62.2 and 63.0 %). Principal component analysis showed that the first five factors determined 78.9 % of the total variability of traits. Factor 2 (22.0 % of the variance) can be called a factor of potential seed production. Correlation analysis revealed a much stronger relationships between all the traits studied in the Ethiopian samples. The correlation between seed production and vegetation period were the strongest ( r ³ 0.9). We have revealed association of certain traits of chickpea plants with the geographical zones of the sample origins. Landraces from Ethiopia are fairly homogeneous and have small, dark and angular seeds, low attachment of the first bean and low seed productivity, are more early maturated compared with the Turkish ones. Turkish landraces are characterized by a great variety of all the traits studied, revealing all their grades described in the chickpea descriptors. In this region, the landraces typical of the western Mediterranean, as well as for territories bordering Turkey in the east had been grown. The structure of the variability and the strength of the relations of the traits differed in the landraces from the primary and secondary centers. It is obvious that in plants growing in different ecological and geographical environment, there is a specific communications between the traits, reflecting the presence of different blocks of co-adapted genes or another integrated gene complexes that determine adaptation to a particular environment. Useful characters for breeding are found in landraces from both centers of origin and chickpea diversity.