Crossing technique without emasculation in chickpea

Abstract

Emasculation in chickpea is tedious due to the small size of its flowers. In addition, any slight injury to the style or stigma during emasculation results in the flowers being shed. As natural seed setting is quite low in chickpea, the success of seed setting in artificial crossing is further reduced by slight injuries during emasculation. The present study was undertaken to investigate the possibility of artificially crossing chickpea without removing the anthers, based on the fact that the stigma dehisec becomes receptive before anthers. Two varieties with contrasting flower colours L 550 (white flowers) and K 850 (Pink flowers) were used. In chickpea, the control of flower colour is monogenic with pink being dominant over white. Therefore flower colour was used as a 'Marker' to find out the extent of self pollination in crosses affected without emasculation. L 550 was used as the female and K 850 as the male. Buds of proper size with intact anthers and the stigma in the receptive stage were chosen and carefully pollinated to avoid injury to intact anthers.