Germplasm Information System for Chickpea

Devraj and Hemant Kumar

ABSTRACT

Chickpea is an important pulse crop in the semi-arid tropics particularly in the rainfed ecology of
the Indian subcontinent. Indian grows chickpea on about 10.56 m ha producing 11.23 m tonnes
of grains, which represent 36% and 44% of the national pulse acreage and production. Indexing
the genetic variability is a mega task for plant genetic resource workers to provide the end users
with easily accessible as well as assessable information on materials they are working with.
Ambiguous germplasm identification, difficulty in tracing different characteristics of germplasm
data and lack of integration between genetic resources, characterization, evaluation and
utilization data have been identified as major constraints in developing knowledge intensive crop
improvement programmes. Germplasm Information System for Chickpea(GISC) addresses the
data management need by producing a user-friendly interface that generates data entry forms,
queries/reports and maintains a comprehensive database for statistical analysis and
interpretations The system has been developed on three-tier Client–Server architecture using
ASP.NET with C# and MySQL. Presently, the system contains information on 1097 evaluated
for 22 important descriptors (14 qualitative traits and 8 quantitative traits) for each accession
under Indian agro climatic conditions. Statistical analysis of the data was done on the variables to
determine the mean, range, variance standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis. Total 4 main
reports (Qualitative Report, Quantitative Report, Query-based Report, and Details report) have
been designed to enable quick and accurate retrieval of data