Drought priming evokes essential regulation of Hsp gene families, Hsfs and their related miRNAs and induces heat stress tolerance in chickpea

•18 & 17 Hsfs and 42 & 34 Hsps were identified in the desi and kabuli respectively.•Their gene structure and motif composition were conserved in all subfamilies.•CaHsf and CaHsp genes were differentially expressed in-silico and on exposure to a combination of mild drought stress (priming) and heat stress in two chickpea varieties in qPCR analysis.•miR156, miR166, miR319, miR171 and miR5213 were found to be targets of sHsps, Hsp70, Hsfs, Hsp90 and Hsp100 respectively by psRNATarget server.