STUDY ON GROWTH AND YIELD PERFORMANCE OF CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.) UNDER LATE SOWING HEAT STRESS CONDITION

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at Crop Physiology and Ecology Research Field, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU), Dinajpur during 24th November, 2017 to 27th April, 2018 to study the effect of late sowing heat stress on growth and yield performance of four chickpea varieties viz. BARI chola-5, BARI chola-7, BARI chola-8 and BARI chola-9. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with three replications. Among the varieties, the performance of BARI chola-9 was better than the other varieties under late sowing heat stress condition. In respect to shoot and root dry weight BARI chola-9 performed better compared to other varieties. BARI chola-9 produced tallest plants and exhibited the highest number of nodules and flowers plant-1 , maximum number of pods plant-1 , maximum seed and biological yield and maximum thousand seed weight under both normal and late sowing heat stress condition, whereas BARI chola-8 showed lowest performance in that cases and other two varieties exhibited moderate performances. The order of heat tolerance based on seed yield and biological yield was BARI chola-9 > BARI chola-7 > BARI chola-5 > BARI chola8. This study revealed that the relative performance of BARI chola-9 was superior to others in relation to late sowing heat stress condition.