Résumé
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), like most cultivated crops, has exceedingly narrow genetic and phenotypic diversity. Thus breeding with only cultivated germplasm will have steeply diminishing returns, raising an urgent need for new sources of diversity. The focus of the research was to assess a representative set of newly collected wild accessions of C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum, for drought adaptation traits, i.e. transpiration rate (TR) response to increasing VPD and to soil drying. These experiments were conducted during the spring season (18 March to 21 April 2016) at the Dicle University glasshouse. The experimental design was a complete randomised block design with six replications. Measurements were conducted in late April during vegetative growth and VPD changed from 2.13 to 4.35 kPa. To measure TR, potted plants were weighed at regular time intervals over the course of an entire day, and therefore, under increasing VPD. At the end of the experiment total leaf area was destructively measured, along with shoot, root and leaf dry weights. There was a 2.31-fold range of variation in the transpiration response among genotypes. The wild genotypes Sirnak and Deste had extreme TR values exceeding cultivated check cultivars, and several wild genotypes had only a moderate increase in TR under increasing VPD. These moderate TR responses provide germplasm sources with a potential to limit water losses under high evaporative demand, akin to a protection mechanism, especially under dry environments or in future climates. These screenings, therefore, open an exciting opportunity for breeding cultivars with enhanced performance under harsh climates.