Agronomic Evaluation of Heat Tolerant Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Cultivars under Late Sown Conditions

A field experiment entitled “Agronomic evaluation of heat tolerant chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars under late sown conditions” was carried out during Rabi, 2022 in sandy clay loam soils of college farm at Agricultural College, Jagtial. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design and replicated thrice. The treatments included six dates of sowing viz., November 1st, November 15th December 1st, December 15th, January 1st and January 15th in main plots and three varieties viz., JG 14, NBeG-3 and NBeG-47 in sub plots. The outcome of the research revealed that crop sown on1st November showed significantly higher plant height (51.7 cm), dry matter production (477 g m-2) and yield attributes like number of branches plant-1 (8.9), number of pods plant-1 (27.9), seed yield (2265 kg ha-1) and haulm yield (5479 kg ha-1) yield compared to other dates of sowing but it was also statistically on par with crop sown on 15th November for most of the parameters. Significantly, the lowest growth parameters and yield attributes was noticed for crop sown on 15th January. Among three varieties plant height was significantly highest with NBeG-47 (51.1 cm) due to its genetic character however, significantly higher dry matter production (403.8 g m-2), yield attributes like number of branches plant-1 (8.1), number of pods plant-1 (23.9), seed yield (1898 kg ha-1), haulm yield (4432 kg ha-1) and harvest index (30%) was recorded with NBeG-3 which in turn on par with NBeG-14 for most of the characters.