Plant breeders need to stay alert in developing new cultivars on a steady basis to respond to the need of ever increasing human population by exploring either natural variability present in germplasms or generating new variability. Field experiment was conducted at five locations of Western Ethiopia during the 2016/2017 main cropping season to study interrelationships and genetic variability present in Desi type chickpea genotypes using agro-morphology. Genomic DNA was extracted using the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method with some minor modifications to further examine the extent of genetic variability at DNA level using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) based on quantitative traits revealed highly significant genetic differences (P<0.01) among the tested genotypes for all the traits considered except number of branches per plant and number of seeds per pod. Wider genetic variations were noticed among inter cluster Euclidian distance measured based on the standardized means for the 11 quantitative traits. Grain yield, one hundred seed weight, number of pods per plant, plant height, and grain filling period had higher contributions in clustering of the genotypes. Grain yield showed significant (P≤0.01) positive association with plant height, branches number and one hundred seed weight, whereas significant negative correlation was evident with days to flowering and maturity. Higher genetic similarity (98%) and lowest similarity (0.21) were detected among tested genotypes using ISSR markers. Using morphological and molecular evaluation, the existence of genetic variability was evident, indicating the likelihood of hybridization in genetically dissimilar varieties.

 

Key words: Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), principal component analysis, cluster, correlation, genetic similarity.