Plant vigour QTLs co-map with an earlier reported QTL hotspot for drought tolerance while water saving QTLs map in other regions of the chickpea genome

Background: Terminal drought stress leads to substantial annual yield losses in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Adaptation to water limitation is a matter of matching water supply to water demand by the crop. Therefore, harnessing the genetics of traits contributing to plant water use, i.e. transpiration rate and canopy development dynamics, is important to design crop ideotypes suited to a varying range of water limited environments. With an aim of identifying genomic regions for plant vigour (growth and canopy size) and canopy conductance traits, 232 recombinant inbred lines derived from a cross between ICC 4958 and ICC 1882, were phenotyped at vegetative stage under well-watered conditions using a high throughput phenotyping platform (LeasyScan). Results: Twenty one major quantitative trait loci (M-QTLs) were identified for plant vigour and canopy conductance traits using an ultra-high density bin map. Plant vigour traits had 13 M-QTLs on CaLG04, with favourable alleles from high vigour parent ICC 4958. Most of them co-mapped with a previously fine mapped major drought tolerance QTL-hotspot region on CaLG04. One M-QTL was found for canopy conductance on CaLG03 with the ultra-high density bin map. Comparative analysis of the QTLs found across different density genetic maps revealed that QTL size reduced considerably and % of phenotypic variation increased as marker density increased. Conclusion: Earlier reported drought tolerance hotspot is a vigour locus. The fact that canopy conductance traits, i.e. the other important determinant of plant water use, mapped on CaLG03 provides an opportunity to manipulate these loci to tailor recombinants having low/high transpiration rate and plant vigour, fitted to specific drought stress scenarios in chickpea.