Genetic Study of Nutritional and Physicochemical Characters of Chickpea Lines and Cultivars (Cicer arietinum L.)

Sixteen Kabuli chickpea lines composed of five varieties released in Tunisia and eleven breeding lines originated from ICARDA have been analyzed to measure their nutritional and physicochemical properties and to evaluate their seed quality. The analysis showed variability among the investigated material in terms of physicochemical characteristics of seeds (weight of 100 seeds, caliber, hydration capacity, inflation capacity) and flour (density, index of color and rate of proteins) and time of cooking (Table 2).The correlations between nutritional and physicochemical characters showed that they were significant between the weight of 100 seeds and the caliber (0.902), the time of cooking and the caliber (0.421), the index of color and the caliber (-0.334), the weight of 100 seeds and the capacity of hydration (0.580). High heritability was characterizing all the characters excepting the density, humidity and the ashes.The results show that the qualitative improvement of these traits is possible in early generations of a breeding program.The effect of supplementary irrigation was beneficial on the caliber of seeds, the weight of 100 grains, the hydration capacity and the rate of proteins.We consider that the genetics and the agricultural techniques take an equivalent part in the improvement of the quality on chickpea