Improvement of Early Maturing and Climate Resilient Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Cultivars Suitable for Multiple Environments in Bangladesh

Ensuring food security for the rapidly increasing population and changing climatic scenarios are requisites for exploiting the genetic divergence of food crops.A study was undertaken to sort out an early maturing chickpea variety for fitting easily between rice-rice cropping systems in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain of Bangladesh.The trial was comprised of eight elite lines of chickpea and executed at various localities in Bangladesh from 2014–15 to 2017–18.The result explored the chickpea genotype,BARI Chola-11 remained superior to the rest of the elite genotypes for having a short maturity period(100–106 days),and lesser days to 50%flowering(47–55 days).The same genotype was recorded to have robust vegetative and reproductive yield attributes including plant height(49–57 cm),podsplant−1(37–50),and optimum 100 seed weight(19.5–20.6 g).Owing to better yield attributes,BARI Chola-11 resulted in the maximum seed yield(1200–1500 kg ha-1)of chickpea and might be recommended for general adoption in the region for boosting nutritional security status through improved productivity under changing climate.

Results of Testing Maize Hybrids on Lands Shifting from Rice-Growing Areas of Less Efficiency in the Mekong Delta

Forecasters predict that by 2020 there will be 4.5 or 5 million tons per annum maize supply deficiency in Vietnam. As a result of this projection, the government responded by shifting 80,000 ha of low-efficiency rice production areas into maize production （2014-2015） and this area of production for maize is expected to increase to 150,000 ha by 2016-2020. Nevertheless, not all commercial maize hybrids could be suitable for rice-growing land in the Mekong Delta and a national project of hybrid maize development for Mekong Delta has been conducted since early 2014. In the project, yield trials of 20 maize hybrids, sourced from Vietnamese institutions and the private sector including Syngenta （NK67） and Dekalb （DK9901）, were sown in Dong Thap, Hau Giang and Long An provinces situated in the Mekong Delta, in minor acid sulphate soils with a pH of 5.0-5.5. The trial included three replications in an Alpha lattice design conducted during spring-summer in 2014. The hybrids flowered at 50-52 d after planting and physiologically matured between 93-97 d after planting. This suggested they would be suitable for cropping systems, which was comprised of three seasons per year. To determine which hybrid is best suited for the region, researchers evaluated yield and ear characteristics. The average yield of the genotypes across locations was 52.03, 54.92 and 57.60 quintals/ha, respectively, and the heritability of genotypes in each location was 0.51, 0.81 and 0.61, respectively. The mean yield of DK9901 was 58.19 quintals/ha, ranking the 7th among 20 hybrids, and NK67 was 47.58 quintals/ha, ranking the 19th. The grand mean was 54.92 quintals/ha and heritability for all genotypes was 0.79. The highest yield was produced by the Southern seed company hybrid SSC474 （69.39 quintals/ha）, which yielded significantly more maize than DK9901 （58.19 quintals/ha） at P 〈 0.05, followed by VS71 from National Maize Research Institute （NMRI） at 63.52 quintals/ha, and LCH9A from NMRI at 63.39 quintals/ha. Although the yield of the VS71 hybrid was greater than the DK9901 hybrid, the ear characteristics were less desirable. Therefore, after comparing these hybrids, it was concluded that SSC474 and LCH9A were the two most suitable hybrids to produce in the Mekong Delta.