Chickpea, lentil, and faba bean are important food crops in CWANA. In addition to providing a major source of dietary protein (particularly for the poor), they play an important role in maintaining and improving soil fertility. In 2002, high-yielding, cold-tolerant varieties of chickpea were developed. Resistant to ascochyta blight, these varieties are suitable for winter planting. Researchers also identified ways to improve the efficiency of statistical analyses of variety trials, and conducted the first study of pathotype-specific resistance to ascochyta blight. Lentil research concentrated on producing winter-hardy varieties for use in the highlands. Lentil cultivars suitable for introduction into the CAC region and new lentil lines with combined resistance to a number of viruses were identified. Progress was made in improving the nutritional value of faba bean, by breeding new lines which contain low levels of an anti-nutritional factor and are resistant to ascochyta blight and chocolate spot disease. Finally, work on developing faba bean resistance to the parasitic weed Orobanche is in progress.

Two new chickpea varieties released in Syria

Chickpea is one of the most important cool-season food legumes grown in Syria, occupying about 90,000 hectares annually. It is traditionally grown in the spring (from mid-February to mid-March) using conserved soil moisture, which gives an average productivity of 670 kg/ha. However, the local, spring-grown landraces are susceptible to ascochyta blight-a devastating fungal disease which can cause serious damage if conditions favor the disease's development. Terminal drought can also cause serious yield losses and, sometimes, even near-total crop failure, as the crop is mainly rainfed. In Syria, late rains in the last three years (1999/00 to 2002/03) have favored disease development. This has caused serious losses in Syria's spring-sown crop, further highlighting the need for ascochyta-blight-resistant lines which would ensure successful chickpea crops.
     In a cooperative effort, the Ministry of Agriculture in Syria (MOA) and ICARDA's researchers have clearly demonstrated that chickpea can make most efficient use of available water if grown earlier in the winter, producing almost double than the spring-sown crop. However, for winter-sown chickpea to be successful, the cultivars must be ascochyta-blight resistant and cold tolerant, traits not found in the traditional spring-sown chickpeas grown by farmers. To address this, a large number of cultivars were developed at ICARDA, and evaluated at various locations in Syria in collaboration with the MOA. Improved materials were identified as being both ascochyta-blight resistant and cold tolerant. Three winter-sown varieties ('Ghab 1', 'Ghab 2', and 'Ghab 3') were released (prior to 2002) by the MOA for cultivation in different areas in Syria.

H.E. Dr Noureddin Mona (center), Syrian Minister of Agriculture, visits a farmer's field near Aleppo in the company of ICARDA researchers and Syrian farmers and researchers, where a susceptible local chickpea variety was devastated by ascochyta blight. .

Ascochyta blight is an economically important disease of chickpea, caused by the fungus Ascochyta rabiei. Although the fungus shows considerable variation in its pathogenicity, the genetics of pathotype-specific resistance has not previously been studied in this plant-pathosystem. The chickpea landrace ILC 3279 is resistant to pathotypes I and II of the pathogen. In order to understand the inheritance of pathotype-specific resistance in chickpea, both Mendelian and quantitative trait loci analyses were performed using microsatellite markers and a set of intraspecific, recombinant inbred lines derived from a cross between the susceptible accession ILC 1272 and the resistant accession ILC 3279. Researchers identified and mapped a major locus on linkage group 2, which confers resistance to pathotype I. Two independent recessive major loci were also mapped on linkage groups 2 and 4, with complementary gene action conferring resistance to pathotype II. Of two pathotype II specific resistance loci, one was linked very closely with the pathotype I specific resistance locus, indicating clustering of resistance genes in that region of the chickpea genome.

Modeling spatial variability in chickpea trials

Chickpea yield trials are normally conducted using complete or incomplete block designs. Although carefully constructed block designs do control experimental error resulting from soil variability in field trials, considerable variability may still remain and can lead to biased estimates of the performances of the cultivars being evaluated. Spatial models have been found to be useful in terms of accounting for such variability in field trials of some crop plants. But analyses using various aspects of spatial variability have yet to be implemented in chickpea field-evaluation trials. Therefore, researchers examined the nature of spatial variability in chickpea field trials conducted at ICARDA's main research site at Tel Hadya, Syria.
     Yield data from 39 chickpea trials, 34 of which used lattice designs, and 5 of which used randomized complete block designs (RCBs), were analyzed statistically, using 18 models. These models incorporated a range of spatial features described in terms of block structure, linear trends, and spatial errors. Researchers fitted all these models, selected the model most consistent with the spatial pattern in a given field and compared the efficiency of each selected model with the classical (RCB and lattice) models. The model which best described the data in a trial was used to compare the performance of the different genotypes.

     Of the 34 lattice-design trials, 22 exhibited variable spatial patterns not accounted for by the lattice blocks. Interestingly, no single model was found suitable for all the trials. On average, classical lattice analyses exhibited an efficiency of 128% over RCB analyses (Fig. 7), while the spatial method gave an efficiency of 144%. The study thus indicated that the gain in efficiency based on spatial models increases with the heterogeneity of the experimental field. As examples, the efficiencies of the spatial models and lattices, and the ranking of the genotypes based on the block and the spatial models in two different chickpea trials (conducted during the 1998/99 growing season) are given in Table 7. It is evident that the ranking of the genotypes can change in cases where the spatial model shows a higher level of efficiency than the classical method. Therefore, we recommend that incomplete block layouts should continue to be used when planting chickpea trials, but in analyses, spatial models should be used to detect the presence of spatial variability, if any. The best model that accounts for spatial variability should be identified, and used in the

In West Asia, lentil is traditionally grown in winter in the lowlands (<850 m a.s.l., with temperatures of about -10°C or below) and in spring in the highlands, where winter conditions approaching -25°C are too severe for lentils. In the highlands of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, lentil is also normally grown as a spring crop, because of the severe winter cold. In these areas, ICARDA's major aim is to shift lentil production from spring to winter planting, to boost production and increase profits for farmers.
     Research, in collaboration with national programs, has shown that lentil production can be increased significantly by shifting planting from spring (March-April) to early spring (February) or fall (October-November). The crop then benefits from winter rainfall and the fact that any moisture received during that period is less subject to evaporation, because temperatures are lower as the crop approaches maturity. This allows optimum vegetative growth and higher water-use efficiency. It has been estimated that about 400,000 ha of the spring crop could be replaced by winter lentil in the highlands of West Asia.