Crossability between cultivated and wild species of chickpea.

Chickpea is an important source of protein supply in human diet of many developing countries. Although all conventional chickpea cultivars belong to the Cicer arientinum, but other wild species are also important as genetic resources for some of the most important agronomic characteristics such as resistance to Ascochyta blight: Relationships between the cultivated species and its wild relatives were studied using 80 accessions of eight annual Cicer species. Including C. bijugum, C. echinospermum, C. judaicum, C. pinnatifidum, C. reticu/atum, C. cuneatum, C. chorassanicum and C. yamashitae. Evaluation of morphological and cytogenetic characteristics showed that semi-erect growth habit, green stems without pigmentation, green and pubescent leaves, white or blue flower color and gray seeds were the most predominant traits among and within species. The highest diversity was found for growth habit, seed color, flower color and leaflet size and the lowest diversity was found for flowering and maturity dates, pod size, number of seeds per pod and seed shape Cluster analysis by means of morphological traits grouped 9 Cicer species into three clusters and C. judaicum and C. arietinum were grouped in two different clusters. Cytogenetic characterization showed that all species with 2n=2x=16 are similar in number, but different in size and shape of chromosome. C. echinospermum showed more symmetrical karyotype than C. reticu/atum. Factor analysis of cytogenetic traits also showed that C. echinospermum is distantly related to C. arietinum compared to other Cicer species examined. The cross ability of cultivated chickpea with the wild species were studied. More than 380 hybrids were made between wild and cultivated species from which 45 putative hybrid seeds were obtained Morphologic, cytogenetic and molecular characteristics were used to identify true hybrid plants. Karyotype studies could not distinguish hybrids from plants produced from selfing. RAPD markers, however, were successfully used to recognize true hybrids. Amplification of DNA fragments specific to male parent in the hybrid plants indicated that true hybrids were obtained from the interspecific crosses of C. arietinum X C. reticu/atum and C. arientinum X C. echinospermum.