Responses of Chickpea (Cicer Arietinum L.) Genotypes Induced by Ethyl Methanesulphonate (EMS)

Full text: This study was carried out in the Field Crops Department, Agriculture Faculty of Dicle University, Turkey, in 2017. The aim of the research was to determine the effects of ethyl methanesulphonate (EMS) in M₁ chickpea plants of six cultivars (Gokce, Arda, Azkan, Diyar 95, Çagatay, and Aziziye 94) and six advanced chickpea lines (N5-5, R6, D2-8, D2-5, K2-35, and K3-10). Seeds were pre-soaked in distilled water for six hours. Subsequently they were treated with 16 mM EMS at pH 7 for 12 hours. The treated seeds were thoroughly washed under running tap water and sown in pots in the greenhouse immediately after the treatment along with the controls. The experiment was established a complete randomized block design (CBRD) with three replications and 30 seeds per replicate. Statistically significant differences were observed for several characters in the M₁ chickpea seedlings. EMS has generally caused late heading time and decrease of other characters in the M₁ plants. The results of the study have shown that characters of M₁ plant seedlings changed between 75.0-100.0% for seedling emergence rate, 3.2-29.6cm for seedling height, 11.1-23.1cm for root length, 7.0-17.1g for seedling weight, 1.13-5.30g for shoot fresh weight, 5.60-12.13g for root fresh weight, 0.160-1.090g for shoot dry weight, 1.23-3.00g for root dry weight. Results show that EMS induced sufficient variation to start mutation breeding in chickpea. (author)