Clarifying interactions between genotype and environment and management in chickpea by focusing on plant and soil attributes

The advancement of conservation agriculture (CA) as an efficacious methodology for sustainable production is contingent upon the introduction of suitable and adapted new cultivars for CA conditions. The objective of this study was to investigate the interaction effect of tillage × genotype and its consequences for the performance of chickpea genotypes under three distinct tillage systems during three cropping seasons (2016-2019) in the dryland conditions of northwest Iran. The results of this experiment demonstrate that the physicochemical attributes of the soil within the CA system have been enhanced. In particular, there has been an increase in the concentration of organic carbon (OC: 0.21%), potassium (K: 98 mg kg^-1), phosphorus (P: 0.93 mg kg^-1), nitrogen (N: 0.057%), and soil moisture (SM: 2.37%) in the zero-tillage (ZT) system compared to the concentration at the beginning of the experiment. Moreover, the findings confirm that chickpea genotypes cultivated under the ZT system demonstrated superior performance (41%) in comparison to those grown using conventional tillage (CT) practices during the third year. With regard to the interaction between genotype and tillage, chickpea genotypes demonstrated a positive interaction with conservation tillage, exhibiting superior performance compared to other systems. Genotypes G1, G2, G4 and G13 demonstrated the highest and most stable performance when cultivated under the ZT system, while genotypes G1, G2, G6 and G13 exhibited superior performance under the MT system, and genotypes G4, G13 and G8 under the CT system. Furthermore, a multi-trait stability analysis was conducted using the MTSI index, which indicates that: The G8 and G14 genotypes were identified as the most stable, with the G14 genotype also exhibiting an above-average yield.