AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATION CENTRE www.arccjournals.com Agric. Sci. Digest., 34 (4) : 268 - 272, 2014 doi:10.5958/0976-0547.2014.01017.9 DIFFERENTIAL YIELD AND QUALITY RESPONSE OF FOUR CHICKPEA CULTIVARS FOLLOWING THE FOLIAR SPRAY OF FIVE SELECTED PLANT GROWTH REGULATORS Mohd Mazid* and Nooris Naqvi 1 Department of Botany, Faculty of Life sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202 002 Received: 18-03-2013 Accepted: 29-09-2013 ABSTRACT 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. Key words: Chickpea, IAA, GA 3, Kn, Plant growth regulators, Tria, Yield *Corresponding author’s e-mail: mozidmohd699@gmail.com 1 Environmental Science Division, Bareilly College, MJPRU, Bareilly-243006 INTRODUCTION Among pulses, for production, chickpea occupies the first position in India and third position at global level (FAO, 2012). The only alternative is to increase per hectare productivity as there is limitation on increasing the acreage for cultivation, it is, therefore, highly logical to innovate ways that can improve the productivity. To attain such goal, the use of plant growth regulators (PGRs) may play an important role as they are known to affect many facets of plant life, including photosynthetic rate (P N ), N-fixation, water and mineral uptake, harvest index. Also, this is mainly due to the use of traditional or low yielding varieties as well as adoption of poor management practices. A considerable variation of yield may be found with the use of suitable varieties (Mazid et al., 2012). A limited research work has been carried out regarding the use of PGRs on chickpea varieties in India. The plant normally produces large number of flowers but most of them dropped and fruit setting is controlled by many factors (Mazid and Mohammad, 2012). Recent literature shows that the use of PGRs is one of the patent force in improving the growth, flower and fruit setting (Yadav and Bharud, 2006). They also help to increase the number of flowers and their retention, since the flowering is influenced by PGRs, the number of pods increases which results in an increase in yield (Singh and Kakralya, 1989; Mazid et al., 2011a & b) and ultimately enhance the productivity by preventing the flower drop and pods shedding in chickpea. Naqvi et al (2014) observed increase in dry matter and yield accumulation by using cycocel. Kn is also effective in retaining the chlorophyll concentration at last stage of the plant and this improves the photosynthetic apparatus (Khan et al., 2014; Mazid et al., 2013). GA treatments showed an increase in shoot and root length, fresh and dry weight of chickpea, and most florigenic of known PGRs (Quddasi et al., 2014). Sakakibara (2004) reported that Tria is a stimulant improved the seed yield in chickpea. Tria have also been found to increase crop yield up to 56%. Therefore, for enhancing the