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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Identifying chickpea homoclimes using the APSIM chickpea model

Yash Chauhan A B , Graeme Wright A , Nageswararao Rachaputi A and Kevin McCosker A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Kingaroy, PO Box 23, Qld 4610, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: yash.chauhan@dpi.qld.gov.au

Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 59(3) 260-269 https://doi.org/10.1071/AR07380
Submitted: 25 May 2007  Accepted: 8 November 2007   Published: 11 March 2008

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) has been traditionally grown in India but is a relatively new export crop in Australia where its cultivation is expanding into new areas. The objective of this study was to identify homoclimes (i.e. similar chickpea-growing environments) in the major chickpea-growing areas of the 2 countries, using the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) chickpea model. The model, which processes climatic, soil, and plant information on a daily time step, was first validated and then used to simulate flowering, maturity, and grain yield of Amethyst, a mid-season cultivar, and Barwon, a full-season cultivar, on low (100 mm), medium (150 mm), and high (190 mm) water-holding capacity soils, using historical climatic data of 67 Australian and 24 Indian locations. The mean of annual outputs of flowering, maturity, and grain yield of the 2 cultivars on 3 soils was then clustered using Ward’s hierarchical complete linkage clustering procedure. At a 90% level of similarity, all the locations could be grouped into 6 homoclime clusters. The Australian locations appeared more diverse as they were present in all the clusters, whereas the Indian locations were present only in clusters 1, 2, and 6. While there were clear geographical patterns of spread of these clusters, in Australia they were not entirely related to latitude. The cluster 1 and 2 locations, which represent the largest chickpea-growing area in Australia, had homoclime locations in common with northern India. The clustering of locations appeared generally consistent with the known adaptation of chickpea in different environments of the 2 countries and therefore suggests that the methodology could be potentially used for complementing conventional approaches of introducing or exchanging germplasm, as well as determining appropriateness of breeding/testing sites.


Acknowledgments

The financial support received from the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) under project DAQ533 for this study is gratefully acknowledged. Authors are also thankful to Andrew Robson for assisting with the GIS work. Thanks to Drs Pooran Gaur and CLL Gowda of ICRISAT for supplying climatic and phenology data of trials conducted in India.


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