Assessing the Genotype-by-Environment GxE Interaction in Desi Chickpea via the Bayesian Additive Main Effects and Multiplicative Interaction Model

Chickpea is the second most important legume crop in pulses, and its performance is greatly influenced by environmental factors inducing a change in the response patterns, complicating the selection of the best cultivar(s). The genotype-by-environment (GxE) patterns of a chickpea dataset (yield and days to emergence DTE) of 36 lines evaluated in 12 environments in Pakistan were assessed in this study. The interaction patterns were evaluated using the Bayesian Additive Main Effects and Multiplicative Interaction (AMMI) model. For yield, the 95% highest posterior density (HPD) regions showed that none of the genotypes (G) were found to be stable since these did not include the null point (0, 0), while for the environments, only E-8 and E-10 included the origin. In contrast, for DTE 11, genotypes included the null point being considered stable for this trait; however, none of the environments included the origin. These results suggest that considering both traits, the genotypes G2, G6, and G17 are the best genotypes across environments, while environments E-8 and E-10 were identified as favorable to all genotypes. Based on the obtained results, the abovementioned genotypes can be forwarded for further processing to be released as commercial varieties.