Seed traits in relation to plant stand establishment in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Seed traits related to plant stand establishment werestudied in chickpea during Rabi, 1997 at the International CropsResearch Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru,Hyderabad and on two farmers fields located at Yelimella village,Rangareddy Dist., A.P.Ten plots (lm x Im) were selected randomly in both thefarmers fields. In farmer-1 field half of the plots were irrigated and noirrigation was applied in farmer2 field because it rained seven days aftersowing. Soil moisture was determined at the time of sowing and afterirrigationirainfall in order to relate differences in plant stands with soilmoisture content in the seed bed.At ICRISAT center, four genotypes, which differed in seedsize, were studied. Two were local cultivars, collected from the twofarmers (farmer 1, farmer 2) ard the other two varieties (Annigeri, ICCV2)were taken from ICRISAT. Crop was sown on three different dates tocreate differences in soil moisture at the time of sowing.In farmers' fields plant stands were very poor ranging from4-17 plantslm2. Reasons for poor plant stand in farmer-1 field wassuboptimum seed rate, where as in farmer-2 field, it was inadequate soilmoisture and poor seed soil contact due to broad cast method of sowing.Yields were also low in the experiments on both the farmers' fields.At ICRISAT center, perfect plant stands were establishedwhen soil moisture was adequate as observed in sow-l and sow-ll (20%to 28% ). However, the plant stand was reduced drastically when the soilmoisture was suboptimum (18.19%) in the seed bed, as observed insow-Ill . Genotypic differences in plant stand and seed yield were notsignificant in the field experiments conducted at ICRISAT center

B Padma Sri, 'Seed traits in relation to plant stand establishment in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)', 2011