Disadvantages Of Chickpea

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) belongs the genus Cicer, tribe Cicereae, sub-family Papilionaceae and family Leguminoseae. The genus Cicer encompasses 43 species. Among them nine are annuals, 33 are perennial and one with unspecified life cycle. Of the 9 annual species, Cicer arietinum L. is the only cultivated species. Based on the morphological characteristics, life cycle and geographical distribution, Van der Maesen (1987) classified the Cicer genus into four sections. Eight annual species, namely C. arietinum, C. reticulatum, C. echinospermum, C. pinnatifidum, C. bijugum, C. judaicum, C. yamashitae and C. cuneatum were placed in section Monocicer, C. chorassanicum and C. incisum (perennial species) in section Chamaecicer, 23 perennial species
Chickpea is often referred to as a cool-season subtropical legume, but much of the crop is grown in the tropics, where at times during the growth cycle unfavourably high temperatures are encountered (Rheenen, 1991). Drought and heat stresses during the reproductive phase with increasing severity towards the end of the crop season are the major abiotic stresses of chickpea as the crop is generally grown on progressively receding soil moisture conditions. Soil salinity and chilling atmospheric temperatures are also important stresses in some growing environments (Gaur et al.,
Recent experiments at ICRISAT by Gaur et al., (2015) studied allelic relationships of the early flowering gene of ICC 16641/ICC 16444 with the previously identified early flowering genes of ICCV 96029/ICCV 2 (efl-1), ICC 5810 (efl-2) and BGD 132 (efl-3) and concluded that the major early flowering gene of ICC 16641/ICC 16644 was not allelic to any of the previously identified early flowering genes and they designated this new early flowering gene as “efl-4”.
Thus, so far four major genes for flowering time, efl-1 (in ICCV 96029, ICCV 2), efl-2 (in ICC 5810), efl-3 (in BGD 132) and efl-4 (in ICC 16641 and ICC 16644) have been identified in chickpea (Kumar and van Rheenen, 2000; Kumar and Abbo, 2001; Hegde, 2010 and Gaur et al., 2015).
2.5 Genetic