DIVERSITY FOR ABIOTIC AND BIOTIC STRESS RESISTANCE IN THE WILD ANNUALCICER SPECIES

Data on 228 accessions of eight annual wild Cicer species and 20 culti vated chickpea check lines were evaluated for diversity in response to six of the most serious biotic and abiotic stresses which reduce crop yield and production stability of chickpea, i.e., ascochyta blight, f usarium wilt, leaf miner, bruchid, cyst nematode, and cold. Relative f requencies of score reactions to the above six stresses were recorded from all the annual wild Cicer species and the cultivated taxon. Patte rns of distribution and amount of variation of the resistance reaction s differed between stresses and species. C. bijugum, C. pinnatifidum a nd C. echinospermum showed accessions with at least one source of resi stance (1 to 4 score reactions) to each stress. Overall, C. bijugum sh owed the highest frequencies of the highest categories of resistance. Next in performance was C. pinnatifidum followed by C. judaicum, C. re ticulatum and C. echinospermum. Furthermore, C. bijugum had the highes t number of accessions with multiple resistance to the six stresses; t wo accessions were resistant to five stresses and 16 to four. Accordin g to the Shannon-Weaver diversity indices ((H) over bar'), five specie s showed discrete mean diversity indices which varied from 0.649 in C. pinnatifidum to 0.526 in C. judaicum, whereas C. chorassanicum, C. cu neatum and C. yamashitae showed the lowest H's, which were respectivel y 0.119, 0.174 and 0.216. Pair-wise correlations among the six biotic and abiotic stresses showed the possibility of combining these resista nces. Interestingly, multiple resistant accessions were predominantly of Turkish origin.