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Gram or Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is considered as an important pulse crop and a regular source of human nutrition. Despite its nutritional values and economic importance, chickpea production is relatively low in our country due to poor genetic variability of cultivars available. The effectiveness of selection depends on magnitude of variability, GCV, PCV, heritability and genetic advance for yield and its component traits. Study of inter-relationships among yield and its contributing traits is also necessary. The study was conducted to determine the variability, heritability and correlations between yield and yield components in 39 genotypes of desi chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Present study was evaluated in completed randomized block design replicated thrice at research farm of Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ujjain during rabi-2017-18. Observations were recorded on plant height (PH), days to 50 per cent flowering (DTF), days to maturity (DTM), number of pods per plant, number of primary branches per plant (PBN), seed index (SI) and seed yield (SY). Present study revealed highly significant differences for days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of primary branches, number of pods per plant, 100-seed weight(gram) and seed yield (kg/ha). The value of PCV was slightly higher than its respective value of GCV. The genotypic variance was highest for number of pods per plant followed by number of primary branches per plant. Broad sense heritability ranged from 53.8% (seed yield) to 99% (days to 50 per cent flowering). In this study heritability was high (greater than 80%) for all studied characters except seed yield. The genotypic correlation coefficients were in general, observed to be higher than that of phenotypic correlation coefficient for all the traits studied. Positive and significant relationships were determined between seed yield and number of pods per plant. On the basis of mean performance of all the characters except seed yield over all the checks i.e. BG-256, JG-16, & GCP-101 and Ujjain-21 (local check) only four genotypes (10 % genotypes) namely; HIR-70, Tungbhadra, RKG-135 and BDNG 2001-2-1 found promising indicated that these promising genotypes can be utilised for further improvement of chickpea.

Keywords: Chickpea, genetic variability, GCV, PCV, heritability, genetic advance, correlation coefficient analysis, days to flowering, pods per plant, 100-seed weight, seed yield.