ICA00008 - Breeding chickpea for drought tolerance and disease resistance

This project aims to enhance production, productivity and yield stability of chickpea under Mediterranean and similar Australian environments through genetic improvement and agronomic options. Most chickpea cultivars grown by farmers in Mediterranean and Australian environments are susceptible to ascochyta blight, affected by terminal drought, susceptible to vegetative and flowering stage cold.


Fusarium wilt, a soil borne disease present in most of the chickpea growing countries needs pre-emptive breeding for Australian chickpea improvement program.


This project seeks to validate the results obtained in the previous project and to provide more efficient and reliable screening tools for the evaluation of germplasm and breeding materials for these stresses.


The newly developed materials and methodologies will be shared with National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) and Pulse Breeding Program (PBA) in Australia.


The outcomes from this project will be significant and will be realized as improved germplasm with combined resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses.