Collecting Chickpea Germplasm in Northeastern Maharashtra, India

摘要

With the recent trend in high-input agriculture in India, the area under chickpea is gradually being replaced by crops such as wheat in north Indian states. However, because of its good price, chickpea is becoming more competitive in the central and southern Indian states, and Maharashtra is one of those states. In Maharashtra, the area under chickpea was 368 000 ha in 1970/71, 429 000 ha in 1980/81, and 672 000 ha in 1990/91 (India 1993), which indicates good prospects for this crop in the state. Though there are some chickpea accessions from Maharashtra in the world germplasm collection, the representation is low. As an arbitrary measure of geographic representation in the germplasm collection, while there are about 1.75 accessions 1000 ha~(-1) of chickpea worldwide, figure is 1.00 accession 1000-ha~(-1) for India, and only 0.60 for Maharashtra.