Assessing agro-morphological diversity of chickpea accessions in western Algeria

Abstract

The chickpea is a very important food species in Algeria whose cultivated type is Kabuli and it is the one of the largest seed legumes. Ten chickpea genotypes were characterized for different agro-morphological traits in order to estimate the genetic diversity. For this purpose, an experimental culture test (completely randomized block system) was conducted at the pilot farm of El Hamaddouche in Tlemcen. Analysis of variance showed a high level of significance for many traits. The Shannon and Weaver index H' (mean) of this collection (0.29) reflects a weak morphological diversity. The principal component analysis (PCA) was performed for all traits and explained 60.43% of the total variability. The genotypes were grouped into five clusters by reference to the chosen axes. Genotypes forming the same group are closely related to each other according to their common agro-morphological traits, the same pattern was observed for the Hierarchical Ascendent Classification (HAC). Cluster analysis and correspondence analysis summarizes that there is a close resemblance between genotypes from different regions, implying that there are no relationships between geographic origins and genetic diversity.