Can the development of drought tolerant ideotype sustain Australian chickpea yield?

Abstract

Terminal drought is a major problem in many areas where chickpea is grown on stored soil moisture. This is exacerbated by the lack of a targeted breeding approach focusing on key traits contributing to yield formation under water-limited conditions. There is no study to develop a chickpea ideotype and test it against commercial varieties under various management systems across the Australian grain belt. This study proposed a chickpea ideotype that can be grown in water deficit areas and compared its performance with commercial chickpea genotypes across the Australian grain belt. Important traits for ideotype construction and breeding were identified and tested against selected commercial varieties in silico in the Australian grain belt using the APSIM crop model. The key phenological, morphological and physiological traits were determined in the field at the University of Sydney's IA Watson Grains Research Centre near Narrabri for ideotype targeting. Five commercial chickpea genotypes (Sonali, PBA Hattrick, Kyabra, Tyson and Amethyst) were selected for evaluation against the chickpea ideotype. The constructed chickpea ideotype showed 76% resemblance to Sonali which performed well under water limited conditions. Simulated yield ranged from 760 to 3902 kg/ha across the Australian grain belt, with consistently higher yield in the ideotype compared with the commercial cultivars. The growing environments were grouped into three major clusters using the soil water deficit method with varying water stress levels. It is evident that grain filling is the most critical stage where soil moisture deficit caused chickpea yield losses up to 16.5% in the present study. By incorporating key target traits and targeting the right environment, chickpea yields can be sustained in the Australian grain belt or in an area having similar agro-ecological characteristics.

Modelling the effects of cold temperature during the reproductive stage on the yield of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

“…Additionally, the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) and RMSD improved further when the impact of frost events was incorporated into the model (R 2 = 0.70, RMSD = 293 kg/ha) and the observed yields ranged from 784 to 2683 kg/ha; our model adequately predicted this range. Moreover, our coefficient of determination is much higher than 0.6 obtained in another study (Kaloki et al 2019), and our RMSD values are less compared to Robertson et al (2002) and Kaloki et al (2019). This also affirms the improvements in predictions achieved in this study from the re-parameterised APSIM model.…”

A strategy of ideotype development for heat‐tolerant wheat

“…Relationships among traits were computed using Pearson's simple correlation test, and principal component analysis was performed using Minitab statistical Package 18.0. Ideotypes for yield potential and heat tolerance were then constructed following the approach described by Kaloki, Luo, Trethowan, and Tan (). The data were pooled across years for each environment type to test the genetic variations and yield variations explained by the traits.…”

Genetic variation in host plant phenology affects microbial assemblages at longitudinal niches of the seedling root after a short residence time

“…Chickpea has a quite limited genetic variation (Varshney 2013), and its wild progenitor (C. reticulatum ) is a rare species with a narrow distribution in a small area of SE Turkey (Abbo et al, 2002). The previous studies screening the collection of Australian chickpea cultivars found that only one genotype (the genotype EF used here) is able to keep early flowering across diverse environments, and flowering time is the most important trait to differentiate the genotype EF from genotypes LF1 and LF2 based on the previous morphological, physiological and genomic comparison (Sadras et al, 2016;Kaloki et al, 2019). Therefore, the differentiation in the root microbiota among the three genotypes in present study was mainly attributed to their phenotypical and genetic variation in flowering phenology, although only one EF genotype was used.…”