DIFFERENTIAL YIELD AND QUALITY RESPONSE OF FOUR CHICKPEA CULTIVARS FOLLOWING THE FOLIAR SPRAY OF FIVE SELECTED PLANT GROWTH REGULATORS.

The experiment was conducted to determine the most effective PGRs for the optimum performance of chickpea cultivars and to select the most promising cultivar. The PGRs were IAA, GA, Kn, SA and Tria and the cultivars were DCP 92-3, GNG-469, KWR-108 and H1. Crop characters like shoot, root length, leaves number, number of pods per plant, 100-seed weight, seed yield and seed protein content were influenced by applied PGRs but most significantly with GA. The effect of spray of PGRs on seed protein content and also cultivar differences were found significant. Cultivar, DCP 92-3 gave the maximum seed yield which was 59.60% more over H 1, produced the lowest value and it was followed by KWR-108. Among the applied PGRs, GA produced the 174.48% higher seed yield than control, and this effect of GA was equalled by that of SA. The effect of interaction treatments was, found non-significant for seed yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]