1. Winter chickpea in Iran, current status and future prospects
Seed and Plant Improvement Dept., Kurdistan Agriculture and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, AREEO, Sanandaj, Iran
Homayoun Kanouni
Abstract
Future of winter chickpea in Iran
Chickpea is an ancient food legume crop in Iran and cold is one on the most important factors limiting the productivity of chickpea in dry highlands of country. In these areas, winter chickpea damages from extreme cold, Ascochyta blight and weed infestation. As a result, chickpea growers opt traditional spring planting. Although spring planting of chickpea resulted in low seed yield and weak plant vigor, but it gains an ensured average yield instead of all crop failure. In order to grow a successful winter chickpea crop, farmers require high yielding cultivars with considerable resistance to extreme cold and ascochyta blight. Such a cultivated variety, will able farmers to sow chickpea without any fear of cold and diseases injuries. Winter chickpea has many advantages over spring sowing e.g. better plant establishment and nodulation, less damage from birds and insect pests and the possibility of extending the crop into drier regions. Winter chickpea promise yield stability, economic advantage, help the farmers to achieve the food and nutritional security as well as increase in their basic household income. Adoption of winter chickpea will increase the water productivity, soil health and help farmers to achieve sustainable agriculture production in rainfed areas. In this paper, it is tried to describe status and prospect of winter chickpea in Iran, following release a new cold tolerant chickpea variety "Saral".
Introduction
Winter chickpea in Iran, current status and future prospects
International conference on Pulses, Marrakesh, Morocco, April, 2016
Winter chickpea in Iran
In the highlands of Iran, winter chickpea suffers from extreme cold, ascochyta blight and weed infestation and as a result, farmers opt for spring planting to avoid the crop failure.
Kanouni et al. (2009) was reported variation among genotypes which were evaluated for cold tolerance (minimum temperature -10°C) in Saral experimental station, Kurdistan province of Iran (2100 m above sea level). They reported that the phenological stage was important in determining the response of the crop to the cold. However, cold resistance decreased with progress in growth from germination to the flowering stage. Malhotra and Saxena (1993) reported that C. bijugum had the highest level of cold tolerance followed by C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum. C. pinnatifidum Jaub. and Spach had tolerant and susceptible accessions. Wild Cicer spp., especially annuals, are becoming important for the cultigen as sources of resistance to cold. They used a frost resistance ration (the number of plants at harvest / the number of plants emerged) as a parameter for cold tolerance and grouping genotypes in three groups namely fall type (frost resistance), winter type (frost tolerance) and spring type (susceptible to frost). Yadav et al. (2007) reviewed controlled environment and laboratory-based screening techniques for cold tolerance (chilling and freezing) in chickpea. In conclusion, genotypes should be screened for chilling tolerance in the field over successive generations before confirming selection under controlled environments to improve chilling tolerance in chickpea for target environments.
Pulse crops play an important role in Iran's agriculture contributing towards food and nutritional security, nitrogen economy, crop intensification, diversification and sustainable farming systems. Food legumes rank second in terms of acreage (about 6.9% of total cultivated land) and 6th in production in Iran. Food legumes research programs in Dry areas including works for genetic improvement of chickpea and lentil started with establishment of Dryland Agricultural Research Institute (DARI) in Chickpea is the most important pulse crop in Iran, 64.3% area and 43.7% production of the total food legumes (Ahmadi et al., 2014). Despite of importance of chickpea in Iran's agricultural systems, its yield and productivity is low and unstable. During last two decades, research activities including crossing blocks, investigation of segregating populations, observation nurseries, and preliminary and advanced yield trials are in progress each year (DARI, 2015). Winter sowing is a major breakthrough in the research on chickpea at cold highlands of Iran.
Chickpea is growing mainly in highland mountainous areas in West and Northwest of Iran. Therefore, climatic factors such as temperature, and rainfall amount and distribution inversely affecting crop adaptation and productivity. Chickpea production in Iran generally relies on spring planting. The average yield of spring chickpea in these area is low (350 kg/h) and fluctuate. However, shifting sowing date from spring to autumn in highlands of western Iran could bring a substantial increase in chickpea production (Figure1) .
Two alternative methods has studied for winter chickpea production in Iran: i) sowing of normal varieties in late December, when the temperature of soil at sowing depth is too cold for germination and the seeds remain in the soil all the winter and germinate as soon as temperature increase in the spring, namely Entezari planting system and, ii) real winter sowing in which sowing accomplish in autumn with cold tolerant varieties. There are some constraints to winter sowing of chickpea in the highlands of Iran. Since temperature varies markedly with altitude in Iran, plant characteristics such as flowering, pod setting, maturity as well as seed yield could be affected substantially by this variation.
Winter chickpea
Spring chickpea
Figure 1. Comparison of growth and development of winter and spring chickpea in the highlands of Iran.
Ahmadi K, Gholizadeh H, Ebadzadeh H, Hoseinpour R, Hatami F, Mohiti Z, Fazli B, Rafiei M, Agricultural year book, Vol 1. Ministry of Jihad-e-Agriculture, Tehran, Iran.
Kanouni H, Khalily M and R S Malhotra (2009). Assessment of cold tolerance of chickpea at rainfed highlands of Iran. American and Eurasian J. of Agric. And Environ. Sciences. 5(2):
Malhotra R S and M C Saxena (1993). Screening for cold and heat tolerance in cool-season food legumes. In:K. B.Singh and M. C.Saxena(eds.),Breeding for stress tolerance in cool-season food legumes. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK pp
Yadav S S, Redden R J, Chen W and Sharma B (2007). Chickpea breeding and management. CAB, International. Wallingford, UK.
References
Figure 3. Chickpea plant (variety Saral) is alive and not damaged during winter.
Figure 2. Succulent chickpea plant (variety Saral) is visible from under the ice and snow at mid March.
In order to grow a successful winter crop, farmers need a high yielding cultivar which can withstand extreme cold, ascochyta blight invasion. Saral- a high yielding variety with cold tolerance and Ascochyta blight resistance - has been released for cultivation in cold highlands of West and North-West of Iran by Agricultural Research Education and Extension Organization(AREEO) in 2014.This variety was developed from a single cross (ILC3470×ILC8617) and selected as FLIP00-86C at International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and shared with the National Agricultural Research Centers of Dryland Agricultural Research Institute of Iran (Figures 2 and 3).  Mean yield of Saral in the national yield trials was 1350  kg ha-1- a 25% yield advantage over the local check (Jam). This new cold tolerant variety could be a game changer for chickpea production in Iran as winter planting coupled with integrated weed management promises high yield, yield stability, and economic advantage. Adoption of winter chickpea will increase the water productivity (more crop per drop) and soil health for sustainable agriculture production in the rainfed areas of Iran.
Advantages of winter sowing of chickpea include the yield advantage of autumn or winter sowing over traditional spring sowing, as well as longer vegetative and reproductive periods, higher fixation of atmospheric nitrogen (N2), less soil erosion during winter, earlier harvests and increased plant height suitable for machine harvesting. Disadvantages include susceptibility to ascochyta blight and fusarium wilt, poor weed control, cold damage and a lack of large-seeded cold-tolerant genotypes (Yadav et al., 2007).
Iranian farmers acceptance of winter chickpea is based largely on the higher yield compared to traditional spring chickpea. Climate fluctuations varies disease prevalence and weed infestation from year to year. The main constraint of adoption of winter chickpea technology in Iran is small seed size of released cultivar(s), and the second one is prostrate plant type, which doesn’t allow mechanized harvesting. Iran national scientists in dryland agricultural research institute (DARI) work hard on winter chickpea technology as a possible way of improving and stabilizing chickpea production. Meanwhile, demonstration and extension programs are under study for developing winter chickpea technology and two categories of fields were covered, experimental fields and demonstration fields. These fields have important role in acceptance and adoption of farmers to grow chickpea in winter.
Cooperation of DARI with scientist from national universities has opened new doors in the front. Using sources of tolerance to cold in cultivated and annual wild species of chickpea is another prospect in chickpea breeding versus cold. Detecting molecular markers associated with genes controlling cold tolerance could increase the efficiency of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in chickpea breeding programs.